Stuff I Know

Cappadocia Part 2

2008-08-16T08:31:00.002+09:00

So if you are tired of wandering around in the snow (or heat in the summer) you can always get away from it by going underground. In the Cappadocia area there are approximately 150 - 200 known underground cities. Most of them are more of a village in size with maybe only three levels, but several are rather large with up to 7 or more levels below ground. These dwellings were dug out of the same layers of tuff as seen around Goreme.

This area was thought to be a church.

It is believed that the early people of the area used these underground settlements to hide in and escape from raiders that frequented the area. The subterranean cities were also used by early Christians who fled to the area to escape persecution from the Roman empire.

Rooms and storage rooms.

The underground city I visited was at Kaymakli. Now I have done my fair share of wandering around abandoned mines while living in the Southwest, so I am no stranger to subterranean travels, but I have to say, this city was really amazing.

That roundish stone is a door that could be rolled in place to keep people out. It can't be moved from the outside tunnel, only from inside the room.

There are arrows and signs pointing the ways down and up, and without them, a person could easily get lost within the different levels of tunnels and rooms. Thank god for electricity. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in that place with only oil lamps and torches. In a word, wandering around that place was, neat.

Looking up a stairway.

My only regret was that since I was traveling alone, there were several tunnels I didn't get to check out. I found a couple of tunnels that just kept going on, or down, into the darkness. I had a flashlight and would have continued further than I did, but the idea of never being found if something happened to me down there made me pause.

A tunnel into darkness.

I did make it out and then it was back to wandering around the tuff valleys around Goreme. George was my companion for this day.

Meet "George."

There are numerous dwellings scattered around the canyons. Most of them no longer have any interior artwork remaining, but there are a few exceptions now and then. An interesting feature of some of the churches is that they occasionally buried their dead right at the threshold. They would just carve out the niches and lay the bodies in.

Grave niches at the front door.

Inside looking out.

I enjoyed wandering around just looking at the beautiful scenery as much as climbing into the rooms and houses. The snow adds a certain quality to the rocks and pillars. I would love to see and explore the area again someday in a different season.

The eroding canyon walls.

I hope you enjoy the photos from Part 2 of Goreme.

Cappadocia

2008-08-16T06:31:00.004+09:00

The region of Cappadocia is probably one of the most visited locations in Turkey. It is known for its scenic beauty, history, and religious significance.

The many different layers of volcanic sediments.

The Goreme (Göreme) area in particular is well know for the houses, churches, and monasteries carved out of the soft volcanic sediment deposited over the area approximately 9 million years ago.

Even today, some people still use the rock pillars as houses.

The rocks also naturally erode into spectacular winding canyons, large pillars, and intricate "fairy chimneys." The location is truly a sight to behold.

A few pillars, and yes the phallic resemblance is common knowledge. This area is called Love Valley.

It may be a popular location on the tourist road, but if you go in winter, you can have much of the area all to yourself. Of course you do have to contend with a few difficulties such as less of a choice in accommodations, closed eating establishments, limited transportation, and the cold and snow. Still, I am glad I went during the winter and hope to go back some day in the spring or fall.

Probably the biggest obstacle for me was the snow. I could deal with the cold, but having to tromp through knee deep snow sometimes just wears you out. I would have loved to do a lot more exploring, but the thought of wading through more snow keep me to more well trod paths. Having your pants freeze while walking back to the hotel in the evening can be a bit of a pain.

In some areas, the snow was just too deep to try and walk through, though sometimes I did make the mistake of trying.

Even if you are a solo traveler, you can usually pick up a hiking companion from the area.

My friend for a day, "Spot."

I actually had to rescue "Spot" once when he fell into a hole and couldn't get out. After heaving him out, I was stuck in the hole myself for a while.

A couple of the church structures within the Open Air Museum. (I nearly died climbing down those icy steps!)

The Goreme Open Air Museum highlights a number of the churches that were carved into the rock. From the 4th through the 10th centuries, early Christians populated the area and carved numerous houses, churches, and monasteries into the rock pillars and cliff sides. The frescos in some of the structures are still very colorful and often very beautiful.

Part of the frescos in one of the churches.

Part 1 of the Goreme photos deals mostly with some of the scenery around the city and the frescoes of the churches. Have a look.

On to Konya

2008-08-06T10:27:00.002+09:00

A stop on the way to Konya.

As I moved on from the sunny coast to the snowy interior of Turkey, I realized I didn't really have much with me in the way of winter clothes. After all, I had just came from India. But I did have enough items to add in layers to keep me from freezing.

The mosque from the back.

Dervish art.

Konya was more of a transfer stop than an actual destination, but it was still a nice visit. The city is know as the home of the Whirling Dervish. And one of its most famous sights is the Mevlana Museum, which is also the mausoleum of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Sufi mystic and poet.

The mausoleum with the green dome, an iconic image of Konya.

A sarcophagus in a museum.

There are a couple of smaller museums around the city that house various and interesting items. It was a quick stop for me, but I expect maybe in better weather, and during the time of local festivals, Konya is probably a pretty nice destination.

Side and a Side of Some Caverns

2008-07-31T06:38:00.002+09:00

No, that isn't a typo in the title. That first "Side" is actually pronounced 'see-day' and is the name of an ancient costal town in Turkey.

Some arches around the outside of the theater.

Side is a small resort town, but it is probably more famous for the seventh century port town. Or more correctly, the ruins of that port town which was an important center of trade in its day.

Ruins along the coastline.

There are lots of ruins to explore such as the theater and the agora (open marketplace), but maybe the most iconic ruin is the partial reconstruction of the Temple of Apollo. It sets on the edge of the sea and must have been quite a sight to sailors of the Greek era.

The Temple of Apollo.

Additionally in this photo set are some pictures from inside two caves near Alanya, Turkey. The closest cave to Alanya is sometimes know as the 'asthma cave' due to the belief that spending time breathing the humid air of the cave can reduce the symptoms of, or supposedly cure, asthma. This interior of the main cavern is a large room with few of the traditional cave accoutrements such as stalagmites and stalactites. There really is just the one main room in the cavern, but it is interesting and offers a respite from the sun of the seashore.

Small stalactites on the ceiling of the 'asthma cave.'

The other cave complex is about 20 - 30 minutes east outside the main city and up in the hills. There is a bus that goes that direction, but during the winter it only goes as far as the cave once or twice a day and doesn't allow for a lot of time to look around. I take what I can get, though. The road winds back and forth as it heads up the canyon to the cave entrance. If you get the bus driver I had, you may want to keep your eyes closed seeing as he tends to use one hand to hold his cellular phone and the other hand to talk with (gesture) leaving no hands to hold the steering wheel.

Stalagmites in the larger cavern outside of the city.

You walk down down some stairs into the cave and then have a choice of going left or right. Go ahead and go left first, since that trail is shorter and then come back to the stairs. Following the path to the right leads you off into the cavern, up and down ramps, and through some spectacular cave scenery.

Looking back through the cavern.

I had the whole cavern to myself on my visit. I didn't have a lot of time to explore, but I do think I saw almost everything and did make it all the way to the end of the cavern. The views of the canyon and coast in the distance are also quite nice.

Some Downtime in Alanya

2008-07-22T07:44:00.002+09:00

In just saying the name of this costal town, you get the impression that it may be a bit different. The name just flows off the tongue more smoothly. And in fact the town itself is a bit different from the other towns in Turkey I had been to previously. Life seems to have a slower pace there. Things feel more laid-back.

The main harbor, near the Red Tower.

And I expect I am not the only one to feel that. Alanya is a top destination for Europeans, and many people have gone there to set up a second home or as a place to begin a new stage in their life. After visiting Alanya, I can see why so many people want to spend time there.

Looking back over the castle to the town.

My main reason for going to Alanya was to visit a good friend. I also took advantage of her hospitality to just slow things down a bit and relax the schedule I had been on. Though the main attraction of the city is probably the beach area and its associated nightlife, there are other things to do and see in Alanya.

My good friend Marryanne in Atatürk's house.

Up on top of the hill near the marina is Alanya Castle dating from 1226. There are some interesting ruins at the top of the hill that are great to explore.

Ruins of a Byzantine era church within the castle.

Down at the bottom of the hill is the Kızıl Kule or (Red Tower). Again, another imposing structure that offers some magnificent views out over the coast.

The Red Tower at night.

Alanya also boasts of Atatürk's House and Museum. Though it was never actually his home, he only visited there for a while, the house does offer a glimpse into early 20th century Turkish life and information into the life of the man known as the founder of the Republic of Turkey.

A bust of Atatürk in Atatürk's House and museum.

Around Alanya there are also some Greek/Roman ruins, waterfalls, and a couple of caverns. I'll mention those in the next post.

The city is full of Turkish culture, good food, and nice people. Real estate prices are rising in Alanya with the influx of foreigners, but if I had the money, I would definitely consider it as a location for my own "retirement."

Here are some photos of the area. As a bonus, there is another rare picture of me in this photo album of Alanya. Enjoy the pictures.

A Twofer

2008-07-03T07:19:00.004+09:00

I am including two cities in this post just because one of the cities wasn't that interesting. Well, it wasn't that interesting on the day that I visited.

No, that is not snow or ice, and I am not in Dover.

Pamukkale is probably a nice place when the conditions are right, but I arrived late at night and the next day was gray and rainy. Gray skies are not the best conditions in which to see the white travertine cliffs that make the city famous. The cliffs tend to take on the color of the sky making everything look faded and worn.

The springs bring up the calcium which deposits as the water cools.

The showers didn't help either. I am sure the place is nice most of the time, but wandering around in the rain with nothing but a small umbrella for protection did not make for a nice day. You may be saying, "Gosh what a wimp. It's just a little rain." True, it may have been just a little rain, but it still was the winter season, and not having a place to dry wet clothes, it certainly is no fun hauling around one's wet garments.

A spring at the base of the cliffs. It's not warm, though.

Anyway, I saw the main attraction but missed the local ruins. That means I do have a reason to visit again some day when I can maybe see the city in a better light. Literally.

On to Antalya. Now Antalya was a very nice city. Its seaside location makes for a beautiful back drop to the sites and the old city with its warrens of older buildings.

Old buildings yet to be restored into shops or hotels.

The museum is very nice too. It has some very nice pieces. Several of the larger items are really incredible. And I hate to bring this news, but ...

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But he is dead.

It kind of spoils Christmas when you see Santa Claus' bones setting in a museum case.

Saint Nicholas is the person credited as being Santa Clause, and there are his bones displayed for everyone to see.

No one is swimming because it's February.

The city has a nice beach area. It is a pebble beach, but the rocks are small enough not to be uncomfortable. And you can wander up and down the beach and find wonderful stones that just beg to be picked up. I had to stop myself so I wouldn't end up carrying too much weight around.

Lots of interesting stones.

And again, the water has an unbelievable blue/aquamarine quality to it. I never failed to be amazed by it.

Makes you want to take up cliff diving.

Enjoy the rest of the few pictures I have.

Ruins

2008-06-28T10:51:00.003+09:00

The ancient city of Ephesus (Efes) is probably one of the best set of ruins you can visit in Turkey. They are a quick three kilometer walk from the city of Selcuk, and, for what you get to see, a pretty good value.

The ruins are pretty extensive and built up enough to give you a good impression of what the location may have looked like, yet not so rebuilt as to erase the fact that they are so ancient.

One of the more impressive building to be given special treatment by the archeologists is the Celsus Library. It held probably 12,000 scrolls and in it's day was likely even more impressive.

Another impressive structure is the Greco-Roman Great Theater. It held approximately 25,000 people. It is interesting to think that the people would undertake building a structure such as that for entertainment. It shows how prosperous the city was at the time. For some nice panoramas of the theater, visit its page at The Ancient Theater Archive.

When visiting Ephesus, be sure to take the time and to wander around and notice all the little details like sewers under the streets, the water delivery system for the baths, the mosaics along the streets and the few remaining frescoes in a couple of the buildings.

Try to visit the structures at the very western edge of the site. They are less frequently visited and the columns and doors there were built to a much larger scale. They are huge.

There is a separate entrance fee for a particular structure at the ruins site. They have covered over a section of a hillside that holds the remains of several houses which supposedly give a good picture of what the life of a city dweller would have looked like back in the day. I didn't go in because I thought the price was a bit high, and the museum in Selcuk shows some of the material and structures on display.

Outside the gates of the ruins to the north and east a bit is the Grotto of the Seven Sleepers. The site itself is not overly impressive, but what is more interesting to me is the story that goes along with the location. I think the fact that the story is mentioned in both Christian and Islamic texts, with slight differences, is rather interesting.

I shot my own panorama of the ruins of Ephesus. It was taken from near the top of the mountain to the south of the main site. The photo is a bit hazy so I'll apologize in advance; but then it was a hazy day and I was pretty far away.

Be sure to visit the ruins of Ephesus if you get to the area. Until then, click below to enjoy the rest of my pictures from that day.

Selcuk

2008-06-10T10:09:00.002+09:00

The Turkish countryside is very picturesque. In many ways it is reminiscent of parts of the American Midwest. As you watch out the bus window, fields and farms fly past, and the hills turn to mountains far off in the distance. You round a corner, and a small town appears, and above the town rises ... not a church steeple like you might expect in the US, but rather the minaret of the local mosque. Yes, things are familiar, but not quite the same.

The town of Selcuk.

Selcuk (Selçuk) is a nice town in a rather historic area. It is know for the basilica of St. John the Apostle, the Temple of Artemis, the nearby House of the Virgin Mary, and camel wrestling. But it may be more well know as a stopping point on the way to the ancient city of Ephesus.

The town itself, though, is pretty nice. It definitely is setup to cater to the tourist market, but not so much so that it loses all it's charm. The museum has some rather "impressive" items.

A statuette of the god Priapus.

If your erectile dysfunction "medication" malfunctions, you may end up with the condition named after this guy. He is a representation of the god Priapus.

Another representation of Priapus.

I wonder if the original head of this statue had a smile on the face.

The opposite sex should not feel left out though. There are also two versions of this fine specimen of a woman.

A statute of a goddess (Artemis?) of fertility.

She is a representation of a goddess of fertility. There are other nice things in the museum, but let's move on to the rest of the town.

There is not much left now but apparently at one time the Temple of Artemis was very impressive. So much so that in 356 BC Herostratus burned it down just so he could become famous. I guess he got his wish.

All that is left of the Temple of Artemis.

The ruins of the basilica of St. John the Apostle are rather interesting and provide a nice view of the grand fortress up on the hill. The fortress has been closed for a while. Apparently a few tourists were hurt when part of the fortress fell on them.

A view of the Grand Fortress in Selcuk.

A rather long walk away from the town is the House of Mary. Apparently John and Mary came to Turkey together. They lived in the city until threats from the populous became too much, so they went up into the mountains to live. There is really not much to see there. A small chapel has been built over the foundation of the house. I guess it is more a religious tourism location than a destination for sightseers.

The chapel over the ruins of the House of Mary.

The story about how the house was located is more interesting than the site itself. Apparently a German nun who had never been to Selcuk/Ephesus saw the location in visions. Sometime later, a French priest found the location described in the nun's visions. Whether you believe the stories or not, the site is located in a very nice location in the mountains. Visiting it made for a nice, but long, walk with some great views of the area.

Looking down on the ancient city of Ephesus.

As mentioned before, Ephesus is the real attraction in the area around Selcuk. I'll get to that next post. But for now, enjoy my photos of Selcuk and vicinity.

Izmir

2008-05-31T03:50:00.002+09:00

I don't know about you, but for me that city name evokes exotic images of the mid-east, cluttered bazaars, or camel laden caravans bring wares to market.

Looking down on the city from the castle.

The modern city, though, couldn't be further from those images. Though it is a nice place to visit, it didn't seem to attract me as much as other places in Turkey.

Part of the agora.

There are some ruins of a Greek/Roman agora that make you think the city must have been pretty spectacular in its day. They are butted up right next to the modern city which is still covering part of the old plans.

Some vaults that were under the castle up on the hill.

The remains of an old castle give a nice view of the city that I am sure is much better when the haze and smog aren't so bad.

Inside the archeology museum.

The museums are small but they have a good sampling of the kinds of things that can be seen throughout Turkey.

In the ethnography museum, this is one of the dioramas depicting Turkish culture. This particular diorama is of the circumcision room. I love the expression on the mannequin's face.

On the modern end of the spectrum, the waterfront has been developed with shops and walkways that, as evidenced by the crowds, the locals seem to enjoy.

A view across the water to another part of the city.

I was only there a short time, but I expect the city can grow on you if given the chance.

This shoeshine box is fancier than most of the shoes the proprietor services.

Here are the few photos.

Further Afield

2008-04-29T00:47:00.000+09:00

It was time to leave the subcontinent. Traveling through India is quite an experience, both good and not so good, but the total experience was a positive one.

Now it was time for a new country. The first stop was Bahrain. No, I don't know much about Bahrain either. I don't exactly know why the flight connected in a tiny country in the Persian gulf, but i didn't have much time to think about it. I was only there for about three hours. Just long enough to buy some chocolate and pick up a few Bahrain-ian (?) coins in change. Then it was on to my final destination, Turkey.

The Blue mosque from the sea side.

Istanbul was a world away from India. Though most of the country is technically in Asia, things look very European. The people, the city, the atmosphere all had a European feel, but it was still a very eastern country. One of the first unexpected things I notice were the blue eyes. Traveling from Korea to China to India there aren't a lot of blue-eyed people around, but in Turkey, there were a lot of them, relatively speaking. It kind of took me by surprised, and I bet a few people were wondering why my glance happened to linger on them for a while.

The Obelisk of Theodosius was take from Karnak Egypt in 390 AD and placed in the city's hippodrome.

Istanbul is a fairly easy city to get around in, even if public transportation can be a bit crowded. It is also an interesting city with a long history. And much of that history is right there in front of you. In fact sometimes, the recent history of Istanbul is setting right on top of the ancient, like in all the houses and shops sitting on top of the old cisterns. Other times the past history has become the present, especially in the case of all the old mosques still being used to this day.

The Basilica cistern is the more interesting of the two cisterns in Istanbul.

The Hagia Sophia is amazing from the outside as the inside.

Many of the sites are rather impressive. Part of the Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofya) museum was filled with scaffolding, yet it did not fail to impress. The sight of the Blue (Sultan Ahmet) Mosque makes you wonder about the past and a grandeur of a sort that didn't include steel and glass edifices.

The archeology museum could probably take up a whole day if you wanted, but you can easily see the best pieces in half a day.

The Archeology Museum in Istanbul seems to go on and on. The sarcophagi are particularly impressive. Even the small Kariye Museum (Chora Church) with its mosaics and frescoes is quite a sight. It is definitely worth going to even though getting there takes a bit of persistence.

The mosaics here really are nice, and you are much closer to them than the ones in the Aya Sofya.

Just one of the many shops in the old bazaar.

There are other museums showcasing the varied history of Istanbul, bazaars to wander around in, bridges to cross, towers to climb, palaces to explore, and the sea to gaze upon. The amazingly clear, blue Mediterranean sea.

With all the history of Turkey, traveling to Istanbul is, in a way, like traveling to Rome, Greece, and the Mid-east, all in one.

I wasn't so vicious with my culling, so there are a lot of photos here. Just pick the ones that look interesting and enjoy.

Mumbai

2008-04-19T00:14:00.001+09:00

The Gate of India. Built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911.

It was still called Bombay the first time I was there many years ago, but other than the name, not much seems to have changed. Mumbai is another big Indian city, and, being such, it is crowded, noisy, and dirty. But there is enough charm in the city to keep a person interested for a while. Personally I had too much time there since I had to wait for a plane ticket out, but that is just poor planning on my part. There are certainly things for the tourist to see and do in Mumbai, but someone should tell the Mumbai government it is not a good idea to close all the tourist attractions on Monday. At least leave a museum open or something.

Most of my time was spent just wandering around, looking at city life and the architecture it exists in. The city has quite a legacy of buildings left over from the days of the British. And they have done a fair job of keeping many of them in good repair though a lot of work still needs to be done.

If I remember correctly, this is par of the University of Mumbai.

Another sight to see is the local laundry, the dobi ghats. When looking over the area you can't help but imagine how much laundry goes through that place. It was impressive seeing so many people doing so many other people's laundry the "old-fashioned" way. It makes you wonder what the effect of a simple appliance like the wash machine would have on the place if it ever became more popular in India. Think of all the people who would be put out of work.

I came in the afternoon, so much of the day's work was done.

Just a couple of caves cut into the rock that monks used for living, study and meditation.

I also saw the Kanheri Buddhist caves not too far from the city and the Elephanta Hindu caves on the island of Elephanta (formerly Gharapuri). The former were more spectacular for their location- cut into the sides of a valley and canyon wall. And the latter were more impressive for their carvings of Hindu deities and the stories being told. Be sure you take advantage of the free guide who can tell you a lot about what you are looking. It was very interesting even if my guide did seem to add a bit of his own philosophical spin to the stories.

This is actually a very large statue.

And yes, I did eat at McDonald's when I was in Mumbai. Come on, I had to go. In a country where the cow is sacred, you have to wonder what the largest hamburger chain in the world serves. Well you vegetarians out there will be happy to know that McDonald's in India does have a veggie burger. There is also a fish sandwich, and a couple of particularly Indian dishes, but the whole rest of the menu is chicken. There is no Big Mac, but the Maharaja Mac is- two all chicken patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese tomatoes, onions, on a sesame seed bun.

Every time I pointed my camera at her, she would tilt her head and go into this "shy pose."

Before I leave India, a few more observations.

Indians are greedy bastards. I am in no way suggesting that India has cornered the market on greed, but they sure do own a lot of stock in it. And this opinion certainly does not apply to everyone in the country. How do I know that "greed is good" in India? Well, there's the first hand experience of being taken for a ride, literally and figuratively, when riding in auto-rickshaws and looking for accommodations as a couple of examples, but it was also noted by just observation of things going on around me.

Not packaged, but still pricey at times.

In India, all factory produced and packaged food, and some nonfood items, carry a MRP, maximum retail price, printed right on the package. This is a good thing, too, because I expect that many shop owners would likely bleed you for whatever they could if they had their way. However, not content with what the government says they should charge, some shop owners have found a way around the MRP on some items. Cold drinks have the MRP printed on them just like other products, but when you take them to the counter to pay, the price may be 1-3 rupees higher. On pointing out to the shop owner that the MRP printed on the product said 20 rupees, I was told it was 2 rupees for cooling charge. If I wanted to pay 20, I could have a warm Coke. Needless to say, I usually wandered around the area until I found a supermarket that didn't add on a "cooling charge."

I had him sharpen my pocket knife. He did a darn good job, too.

During my time in India, the Indian auto manufacturing industry brought to market their first car for the "every-man." A compact car with a low enough price point that, ostensively, nearly everyone could afford. This might seem like a good thing, and in some ways it may be. But I, along with several environmental pundits see it as more of a negative thing. The environmental folk are decrying the move because of how devastating to the environment it would be to actually put a whole new class of Indians into the automobile.

While I generally agree with the environmentalists, after traveling in India, I see a negative aspect from a wholly different perspective. Where are the auto producers planning on having these new drivers drive, let alone park? Except for the area around Mumbai and maybe a couple of streets in a couple of cities, rarely did I travel on a road with more than one lane in each direction. More often than not, the shoulder was used as a second lane, along with the center line as long as you could scare the drivers coming the other way in to moving over. There is just not room on Indian roads for a whole new class of Indian drivers. Auto makers should be spending money on infrastructure projects rather than new low priced cars. Otherwise sales will come to a halt when people realize they can't actually get anywhere even if they do buy their own car.

Enjoy the photos.

Just A Quickie

2008-04-05T14:37:00.000+09:00

Hey there. If anyone regularly reads this blog (Maybe there are a few at least.) don't despair. I will be getting to the rest of the pictures soon. I have been out of touch for a while, moving around, expensive Internet, no time (yeah, right), and such.

Here's where I am at the moment.

View Larger Map

I hope you are doing well wherever you might be or be headed.

I just realized the other day that when I get to my home base after this trip, I will have gone around the world in both directions. The first, easterly, was quite a while ago, from home to NY, to Africa where I stalled for a while working in the Peace Corps, then Asia and Southeast-Asia, East Asia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and home. This time it was home, west to Korea where I stalled for work for a while again, then China, Southeast-Asia, India, then to the Mediterranean with Turkey and Greece, and then across the Atlantic to home again.

Huh, I guess the next direction should be north to south or south to north, though I don't know what the likelihood of actually traveling over the poles really is.

Time to get on the move again. I'll be back in not too long a time. Take care.

Anjuna

2008-03-25T01:11:00.000+09:00

From Panaji it was back to the coast. This time to Anjuna beach. There are several beaches in the area and Anjuna is probably the least developed for tourists, though that isn't saying much. But at least it isn't like the beach 30 - 45 minutes down the coast and around the headland. That place was thronged with Euro-tourists. Lots of overweight people showing too much flesh.

I have nothing against nudity. The "too much flesh" I mean was the extra poundage displayed when these people stuff themselves into what swimming suits they have. I have nothing against heavy people either, though it is obviously unhealthy, but, in my opinion, if you are going to go swimming, you should seriously consider getting a swimsuit that fits your form a little better as opposed to what looks good on the store mannequin. I know I am certainly no Adonis, but I have been told I have a nice but. That being said, I personally don't think it is nice enough to put on display in a thong on a beach that is populated by people more moderately dressed.

Many people seem to have an overly negative image of their own body, and that is too bad. Yet others can have an overly positive self-image of their body and that can be bad too. There is a lot more average out there in the world than people want to believe.

Besides the beach, another thing that makes Anjuna popular is the weekly flea market. Every Wednesday, people come from all over to sell their crafts, products, and old junk. There isn't that much old junk, but there are certainly a lot of interesting things to see. You could easily spend hours just walking around and looking at stuff. There is lots to buy, and if you get there early in the morning, you can get some good prices on things due to the Indian belief that they have to get that first sale out of the way as soon as possible for good luck.

Though there are lots of nice things, the problem for me is that I never really buy things unless I really need them. I rarely buy clothes unless what I have wears out. And I often pick up junk from the trash if I think it looks useful or might be able to be fixed. So whereas that carved animal or unique knickknack might look good on a mantle, I won't buy it because one- I don't have a mantle, and two- what would I really do with it once I have it? I have a hard enough time trying to get myself to buy souvenirs for family or friends. Consequently I think postcards are a godsend.

Not a lot of pictures from Anjuna- beach again. But there were some interesting rocks and a nice ruin of a fortification up on a nearby hill. Enjoy.

In My Opinion

2008-03-25T00:51:00.001+09:00

Living in the East (Korea in my case) you sometimes tend to forget what things look like in the West. As I have traveled from east to west on this trip, I have come to realize (yet again) what a blight graffiti is on the urban landscape.

I understand the occasional need for self expression, but there are ways to achieve that which do not involve vandalizing public or private property and making the city you live in look like a wasteland.

Some may say graffiti is art. I'm sorry, but any fool can write their name, initials, or group affiliation on a wall (and many do), and that is what the great majority of graffiti is. And also, writing your name in a "funky" font generally does not qualify as art either.

If you feel you must take pen or spray can in hand, do something creative with them. Use your imagination; show some originality instead of just the alphabet; create art. Believe me, you'll be remembered much longer for creating something rather than just writing your name. And if you feel you must see your name, sign your art rather than the wall.

When I was a young kid and happened to mention that I wrote my name in some wet cement, my mother said something to me, as mothers do, that I have remembered ever since.

"Fools' names and fools' faces are always seen in foolish places."

Old Goa

2008-03-20T15:21:00.000+09:00

I think bus drivers in Turkey and Greece have to smoke, despite the little sign above them that says no smoking on the bus. It is probably one of those little "unwritten rules." Kind of like how in India all males must have a mustache. It seems that as long as they are able to grow one, males in India wear mustaches. No not 100%, but pretty darn close, mind you. Interesting the "rules" society imposes on us.

(Oh yes, I am in Greece now which means I am a full country behind in my posting of pictures. I'll get them all in eventually. Anyway ...)

Another reason to visit Panaji is as a base to visit Old Goa. It makes a nice day trip as the sites to see there can easily be visited from the central area where you hop off the bus. What is there to see? Uh, well, more churches and some church ruins. These churches are pretty impressive, though, almost "cathedral" in scale. The interior decorations are generally fairly impressive, too.

One of the churches is the resting place of the "incorruptible body" of St. Francis Xavier. They keep the body up on a dais and take him down to allow the faithful to have a gander every 10 years.You can actually see him a little bit up there through the glass coffin, and I have to say, his body looks pretty corrupted to me, very dried out and "mummified." I actually filed through the church when they took him
down in 1994 (On a whim, not knowing what was going on at the time.) and he looked pretty dessicated then, too. Maybe the fact that he isn't getting any worse is the actual "miracle." I don't know.

Read this I found about the saint: copyright John Howley and
Spiritual Guides from here.

"While traveling by boat to China, he got dysentery and died on the island of San Chuan (Sancian), off the Chinese coast on December 3, 1552 at the age of 46, ten years after his arrival in Goa. His body was buried in Sancian and later taken to Malacca. Even though the grave was filled with lime, the body was in perfect condition. Later, his body was again removed and taken to Goa on March 16, 1554. St Francis was canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV. The body was then placed in the chapel in the Basilica of Bom Jesus.

Parts of Saint Francis' body have been removed as relics. In 1554, a Portuguese woman is said to have bitten off one of his toes. In 1615, part of his right arm was taken to Rome and placed in the Church of Gesu. Part of the right hand was taken to Japan in 1916. Parts of the intestines were removed and distributed to various places in Southeast Asia. In 1890, one of his toes fell off. It is kept in a crystal case in the Sacristy of the Basilica of Bom Jesus."

There is another "miracle" in the town, too. One of the churches has a crucifix where the figure of Christ is said to have open and closed his eyes and mouth. It also causes miraculous healing for those who pray here. Well, some anyway. Looking up at the figure, I could see where the lighting and the position of viewing may make it look like the face of Christ might move, but he didn't so much as wink at me. Oh well, I wasn't praying for any miracles anyway, and I doubt the only thing I would have asked for, world peace, would be within the bounds of grantable miracles.

Be sure to visit the ruins of the old church and the museum there too. All in all it was a nice day, even though after a long walk up the hill, the last church I wanted to see turned out to be closed. The view was very nice though.

Panaji

2008-03-11T02:11:00.000+09:00

Panaji was an inland jaunt again. It is located up an estuary that sailors of old used, as evidenced by the numerous churches and religious ruins in the area. It is actually a rather nice town as far as Indian towns go. The river front area makes for a nice walk and a walking tour through the town to see the old quarter, the churches, and the Hindu temples makes for a nice day.

The town had a modern multiplex, so I decided to see a movie. I chose a Hollywood movie since I really doubted I would enjoy an Indian movie without any English subtitles. I honestly don't remember the movie's name, so it couldn't have been that great, but it was a nice break from the 'ordinary.'

Going to a movie in India is a bit of a different experience than seeing a movie in the west. Some ads were showing on the screen as I sat down, but then not long after, the waving Indian flag appeared and everyone stood up as the national anthem was played. Not wanting to be the odd man out, I stood up too. As I did, I could not help but imagine how not well the idea of making everyone stand for the national anthem at the beginning of a movie would go over in America.

The anthem ended, everyone sat down and the movie started. A little over an hour into the film it was stopped and we were informed that it was intermission time. Again, that would probably not go over well in America. But in India, since most films are three hours or more, an intermission is almost a necessity. Consequently, they still have intermissions even though most western movies don't need them. A few minutes into the intermission, trailers for other movies started to play. While it is always nice to see trailers, the scenes of different movies kind of interrupts the flow of the movie you came to see.

After the trailers ended, the movie resumed and was interruption free until the end. In all, quite a unique experience. I hope you enjoy the few pictures of Panaji. More photos next time.

More Beaches

2008-03-05T23:48:00.000+09:00

After Hampi it was back to the beaches for a while. Forgive me, but there are not many pictures here. I just don't really take many pictures when I am lazing on the beach. Consequently I am going to lump a couple of places together here.

The very northern end of Gokarna from the headland.

The first location was Gokarna. The beach there was typically Indian, but it stretches far enough that you can get away from the bus crowd with a short walk. But the real gem of the area is just a bit south up and over a headland. About 20 - 30 minutes walk from Gokarna is Kudle beach.

The headland from on top.

It is much cleaner and much less populated with people, especially day-trippers. The water seems cleaner than normal and the beach definitely is. It has a shallow slope so you can get relatively far out and still be within a manageable depth for anyone not quite sure of their swimming abilities. The waves are benign and only serve to a bit of sound to the otherwise peaceful setting. There are several restaurants on the beach and some of them provide primitive huts or shacks if you would rather really get away from it all and not stay in the town of Gokarna.

Kudle beach from above.

There is actually one more beach up and over the next headland south of Kudle beach, but there is also an access road to that beach, so it is only a little better than Gokarna and certainly not near as nice as Kudle. If you would rather not walk, there is a semi-regular boat service from one beach to the next. I think Kudle was probably the best beach in India that I went to on this trip.

The beach at Coval.

From Gokarna I took a the train to Margao and then a bus to another beach area. I think this town suffers from a bit of an identity crisis, though. On the buses and signs I would see the name of the town spelled as both "Colva" and "Coval." I would say one version to a person and they would say the other version back to me.

Not much surf here either.

However you spell it, though, this beach area is much more developed, especially for package tourists. There were obviously groups of Europeans from different regions staying at different places along the beach. Some restaurants even seemed to cater to certain groups. And a couple of Indians spoke some European languages at me assuming I was from there.

Nope, not much to eat here. He is only about the size of an American quarter.

The beach was nice, nothing really spectacular, but the long stretches of mostly white sand to either side of you as you faced the ocean did somewhat fulfill that deserted island fantasy that many people harbor- if only all the people could have disappeared for a while.

Not much of a catch in the nets, either.

There was one particular thing I liked about the beach. Along a certain part of the beach, just above high tide, The sand was very fine and soft. In fact, when you walked on it in shoes/sandals, it would actually squeak and crunch the way snow does sometimes. I thought it was neat.

I spent much of my time on these beaches trying to develop a bit of a tan so that when I got home I still wouldn't be the pasty white guy that winters in Korea seem to foster. Of course I got a bit burned, but in time, that burn served as a good base coat (as the late John Candy would say). (Note- Much of that tan has already started to fade due to being covered up all the time in Turkey. :-( )

I hope you have enjoyed the few pictures here. Yes, that is all of them. Maybe if you push your imagination hard enough, you can produce your own beach fantasy from them. maybe not.

Hampi

2008-03-03T03:08:00.000+09:00

Hampi was my next destination of note. It seems to be fairly popular with travelers and tourists. Luckily though, the bus tours don't seem to spend a lot of time there, so things can be pretty laid back for the backpacker crowd. Hampi is a nice place to spend a few more days in one location than you might usually.

One reason is just the setting. Hampi is situated on a plain strewn with granite boulders and the occasional granite hill. Additionally, there is a nice river winding its way through the plain which feeds or is fed by streams leading to banana plantations and sugar cane fields.

The scenery alone would probably be enough to make many people want to visit, " ... but wait! There's more!" Hampi was also a large population center at more than one time and there are ruins of temples and city structures from different eras all around he area.

For some of the structures all that remains is just the impression of where things once stood, but other structures are still standing, revealing much of the glory of days gone by. The Indian government has done a good job of restoring some structures and yet leaving some areas relatively untouched for the Indiana Jones in all of us. The work is on-going though, so don't wait too long to visit or by the time you get there everything will have been rebuilt.

Another good thing about Hampi, especially for cheap bastards like me, is that you can wander around and see a lot of interesting things without ever having to pay anything. There are entrance fees to a couple of areas, but until you are ready to see those particular locations, there is a lot to keep you occupied. it can be hot though, even in winter, so just be ready for the weather.

Yes, I went into the hills with all my money and camera, alone, and I didn't meet one robber. Maybe that is because I didn't bring any narcotic drugs with me.

Again, there a re a lot of pictures here so it may be best to use the album view rather than the slide show. That way you can click those photos that pique your interest and bypass the yawners.

Indian Erotica

2008-02-26T00:46:00.001+09:00

Yeah, that title should bring in folks from the search engines.

Now we come to the portion of my travels that the prurient among us have been waiting for. The R-rated section of historical India. No, I didn't visit Khajuraho which is famed for the erotic carvings on its temples. But I did take some photos of carvings in other places, mostly Hampi, that prove that in the past, India certainly was not as prim and proper as it may seem to be today. After all, this is the culture that gave us the Kama Sutra.

Those easily offended can pass on by, but for the rest of you, cover the children's eyes or close the bedroom door and click to your heart's content. OK, honestly I doubt anyone will be titillated by these photos of carvings, but I thought I should give fair warning. You never know who may surf to your web page.

Some of these carvings are a bit worn, so if you are having trouble making out what you see, (ladies only) send me your name, age, and measurements and maybe we can arrange for a private viewing of my etchings ... uh, photos. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean.)

Belur and Halebid

2008-02-23T00:26:00.000+09:00

If you are ever in the area of Hassan in Karnataka, India, do yourself a favor and stop long enough to take a day trip to Belur and Halebid. They are easy to get to get to and you can visit both of them in one day.

The temple at Halebid and ...

The temple at Belur.

If they are such a quick trip, you may be thinking to yourself, there must not be much to see. Well, technically there isn't. There is just one main temple in each city, but each of those temples can keep you enthralled for hours. The carvings on these temples are some of the most intricate and involved I have seen in India. You wander in and around the temples marveling at the handiwork you see.

This is actually only about as tall as your hand.

There are things done on the large scale, like giant bulls and large lathe turned pillars, and things done on the small scale like scroll work and frolicking monkeys. There are even parts of the temples where you can see how the work was done due to the unfinished nature of some of the carvings. After spending some time at these places, you can easily see why writers and historians say these temples were produced at the height of their particular period.

Another small detail.

Large scale work.

There are a lot of photos here, but I think you will enjoy many of them. It may be best to choose the 'album view' and then pick and choose at your leisure. Remember though, I am only taking photos of the art that is already there.

Elephant attack!

And no, I don't know why this bull has decapitated a man and is displaying his head for all to see.

Have a look at the photos.

Mangalore

2008-02-20T01:22:00.000+09:00

I have complained several times about bus travel in India, but I could almost as easily complain about train travel here too. It is often a dilemma trying to decide on which mode of transportation to use.

There are almost always buses going wherever you might want to go if you can figure out what is going on, but buses can be dirty, uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous. Trains have inconvenient schedules, offer fewer destinations, and are often crowded or fully booked; yet they can be more comfortable and offer a completely different view of the Indian landscape. Actually both trains and buses can be much more comfortable if you are willing to pay significantly more for you seat. Oddly enough, though, generally neither option seems to be that much quicker than the other when heading to the same destination.

Buses can be somewhat cheaper than a similar train journey, but often the bus stations are outside the city which means you have to figure the cost of a taxi or auto-rickshaw into the equation to get where you really want to go. This can bring the cost of the bus trip equal to or greater than the cost of a train trip.

Yes, there is a third way to travel, by plane. But for me, traveling by plane would mean losing part of what I go on journeys for in the first place, the experience of traveling itself. Even if the plane itself may not be quite so, to me, plane travel feels a bit sanitized.

I hate sounding like a whiner.

Mangalore was just a pause in the journey, but I did have time to get out and look around the city. And luckily there was something to see.

This trip wasn't planned as a religious excursion or pilgrimage, but it does certainly seem like I have visited a lot of churches and temples. I think there have been so many churches because much of my travel has been concentrated, relatively, near the coast. I expect that in the days of old the missionaries themselves didn't wander too far inland, at least until they had well established flocks and churches to keep the home fires burning.

Not So Nice

2008-02-16T17:50:00.000+09:00

It was a seven hour ride from Ooty to Kozhikode (Calicut) and it cost me less than $2 US. No, don't congratulate me on my frugality. It certainly was not a bargain. It was dusty, dirty, noisy, and bone-jarringly bumpy at times. There was some nice scenery at times, but I don't think that quite made up for the negative aspects of the ride.

Calicut was certainly not much to write home about. The guide book mentions that it is an OK city. but I would even question that rating. The few "sights" were not really interesting compared to anything else in India, and the beach ...

Well let me tell you about the beach. The main beach area is a typical Indian beach, generally dirty. There is some "development" there in the form of carnival rides and such, but overall it is not very appealing. But perhaps my impression of the area has been colored by the rest of the beach.

I thought it would be nice to take a walk up the beach and get away from the developed area. As I started walking up the beach, I could not believe how much crap there was on the beach, and I don't mean trash. Human feces was practically rolling in the surf. Apparently the whole long stretch of beach is nothing more than a toilet. People drop their loads, wash them selves in the surf, and walk away. It was actually pretty disgusting, and I have seen some bad things in my travels around the world. Come on, even cats will bury their shit.

Now some of you may be saying, give them a break, it is the ocean after all. If they were taking a dump in the ocean, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. But it was on the beach. Piles between the water's edge and high tide, and logs rolling in the waves.

Makes you think twice about wanting to swim at the beaches in India, doesn't it? But don't worry too much. I didn't seen anything quite like this at any of the other beaches I visited in India. So my advice to you is to avoid Calicut if you can, and if you can't, just get in and out as quick as possible.

There are only three photos from Calicut in this set and they don't even show the city. One is a list of all the possible discounts available for train tickets, the next is a political poster for one of the parties in Kerala (In the north they seem to prefer Che over the communist trinity.) and the third is of the guy who fixed my sandals.

The other photos are of the Wayanad area back up in the hill country a bit. Supposedly there is wildlife in the park area there, but I only saw some monkeys, deer, and the side of an elephant. And the elephant wasn't even actually within the park. (It was just his side because he was off in the distance in the forest and I couldn't quite see his head for the trees.)

Have a look at the photos if you want.

Udhagamandalam

2008-02-06T00:58:00.000+09:00

To get away from the dust and the heat (well, the heat anyway) my next stop was Ooty. Yes, the name given to it by the British is much easier to pronounce. It is located up in the hill country, the Nilgiri range of the Southern (Western and Eastern) Ghats. The British of colonial days turned it into a retreat, their own respite from the heat of the plains.

The Nilgiri are sometimes called the 'Blue Hills'.

It was nice to be in a different environment. It was cooler; there were different trees, I was hoping for more pine but they were mostly eucalyptus; and things just took on a different air.

Before arriving in Ooty, something kept nagging at me from the back of my mind. The name sounded awfully familiar and not just because I read about about it in the guide book. Then the second day when I went to the botanical gardens and saw the entrance, it hit me. I had been here before, 13 years ago. On my last trip to India, I believe this was as far south as I had gotten. I had gone to Ooty before and completely forgotten about it until right then.

The more I walked around the city, the more I began to remember things. I think the reason I didn't remember the first day was because the town has changed, a lot. I remembered a lot more tea plantations. Most of the tea plantations seemed to have moved further away from the town. Now the plots are lying empty or a lot of vegetables, mostly carrots, are being grown in former tea plots. The town has more buildings, too, but nothing really looks very new.

One of the tea plantations still in the valley.

It is OK that I was visiting the town again. I was actually rediscovering it all over again. And I did a few things I didn't do on my first visit. On Christmas eve day I climbed up the highest mountain in southern India, Doddabetta peak at 2634 meters (8640 ft), and hiked back down a roundabout trail into the valley of Ooty.

A pond along the trail down.

And on Christmas day I took a bus to Kalhatti falls, ate my lunch (yes, peanut butter and crackers) in the presence of some beautiful nature, and then walked the 11 km back to town. It was a Christmas celebration of a different kind.

The falls from the bottom. I have a view from the top, too.

Thrissur

2008-02-03T16:56:00.000+09:00

Thrissur (Trichur) was not much to write home about, but I do have some pictures of a couple of churches there.

And an elephant.

I guess the people in Thrissur must be pretty special (or pretty evil) if they have to bring in holy water by the tanker truck.

Note: Just for the sake of clarity, I am actually traveling in Turkey now, but I still have some photos of India yet to post.

Kochi

2008-02-02T00:44:00.000+09:00

Kochi (Fort Cochin) is another place you can visit to get away from the hectic rush of India. Of course it is still India, but because it is an island, very close to and connected to the mainland, it retains some of its colonial feel. You don't feel quite as pushed along with the crowd as you do in other Indian cities.

Along part of the coast, they still use the large square nets on frames, that are dipped into the water, to fish. While I was watching, they didn't seem to catch much; so I have to wonder how much of this effort is for actual fishing, and how much is for the tourist's benefit. It certainly does make for nice photos, though.

There are a couple of interesting churches on the island and inside one of them is the actual grave where Vasco da Gama was buried. Before they dug him up and took his body back to Portugal, that is.

On the coastal side of the island is the old town, the area that still, to a small degree, resembles what the town used to look like (before the antique shops came in anyway).

Also in that area is an old palace (Kerala style- meaning made of wood and probably not as grandiose as you might imagine) that has been turned into a museum. There are several wall paintings in the palace that are quite impressive. But I have to wonder about the king or maharajah who lived there. A wall painting in one room with a forest scene has all manner of forest creatures in the act of fornication. The human characters in the scene aren't actually doing it, so I have to assume that the painter used the animals to imply what he couldn't paint. Sorry, no pictures.

But I do have some pictures from the rest of my time in Kochi, so enjoy.

Alappuzha

2008-01-29T23:45:00.000+09:00

The "backwaters" are supposedly one of the highlights in a visit to the state of Kerla. Backwaters refers to the rivers, and canals that wind their way inland from the coast through the villages and forest. And they actually are pretty nice.

The beginnings of the lake just outside Alleppey.

The best way to see the backwaters is to rent a houseboat for a few days and just cruise along at a leisurely pace. Some of these house boats can be rather grand, with large bedrooms, verandas, and air conditioning.

One of the more stately type of houseboats.

Of course renting a whole houseboat certainly isn't cheap. And it was prohibitively expensive for me to do it alone. One of the pitfalls of a solo traveler. There was an opportunity for me to join a group of people who were going to rent a houseboat, but at the cost they gave for just two days and one night, I still couldn't justify it to myself for this trip.

One of the canals.

Alappuzha, better know as Alleppey, is one of the entry points to the backwaters. There are a few cities that you can start a backwater journey from, but Alleppey has the advantage that there are two canals that run through the town which make accessing the backwaters easier. And those canals make wandering through the town a more pleasant experience. Parts of the canals are a bit over grown and consequently a bit drab looking, but generally they are in pretty good shape, especially considering what most city waterways look like in India.

Traffic on the backwaters.

While I didn't go on a houseboat trip, I did get a chance to see a bit of the backwaters while I was in Alleppey. I took a canoe tour. I sat in the bottom of a canoe while a guy paddled me around for a few hours. My guide/motor didn't speak much English, but he did tell me he was the number five paddler on the the city's boat in the annual snake boat race (kind of like a dragon boat race). Apparently the stronger paddler you are, the higher up your position is, one being the highest.

The trip was actually a pretty nice way to spend an afternoon. In fact, even though Alleppey doesn't have much else to see, it may be worth a stop even if you don't happen to take a boat trip.

This photo needs an explanation. It was an overcast day, and I took this picture of the reflection of the sun in the water.

Here are the photos for you. There is a special rare bonus photo of me in the bunch. I rarely have pictures of myself taken. And yes, that is pretty much the way I look most days of this trip. Enjoy.

Varkala

2008-01-27T20:06:00.000+09:00

This was my first real planned beach retreat. The guidebook says that the beach a bit further south, Kovala, might be a bit more picturesque, but the more upmarket hotels also mean it is more expensive. Well, that settles it then. Varkala and the cheap backpacker scene it is for me.

I thought the beach at Varkala was great. Of course you do have to walk down from the cliff (via stairs) to get to it, but hey, in that way it is a bit more special. There is a peculiar thing (not so peculiar when you think about it) you quickly notice about Indian beaches. Any beach that is easily accessed by the general Indian public is always dirty- covered by trash and sometimes scorch marks. If it takes any initiative to get to the beach, like walking more than five or ten minutes, or climbing hills or steps, that beach will invariably be much cleaner. Even beaches that are long stretches are always cleaner just a short distance from the bus stop/parking lot.

I spent the first couple of days at the beach a bit logy due to some sickness. I had a temperature of 102 degrees one night, but since the temperature did not return, I ruled out malaria. I guess it was just the flu or something. The next couple of days at the beach were nice. Just sitting on the beach, playing in the ocean, and overall relaxing. I didn't develop much of a tan there due to a combination of lots of suntan lotion from fear of sunburn, and a couple of overcast days.

A "tank" next to a Hindu temple a bit inland from the beach.

Two consecutive days when I and others were out swimming, a small group of dolphins came not more than 50 to 75 meters from the people in the water and swam around for a while. They would swim along the surface and occasionally leap out of the water. Once, one of them even did a flip, all without prompting. It was kind of exciting each of those two days, kind of like my own little dolphin encounter.

Not many picture from Varkala. Sometimes you have to just put down the camera and enjoy yourself.

Politics

2008-01-19T20:05:00.000+09:00

The state of Kerala in India may be run by communists, but they must be doing something right. In the capital city of Thiruvanathapuram (Trivandrum) I did not see one single beggar. I even saw people who certainly looked like they should have been begging, but they weren't. Interesting. Just so you know, though, all of Kerala was not beggar free.

Having grown up on the tail end of an age where communism was the "one global threat", it was a bit odd to see the hammer and sickle, the symbol of communism, everywhere. Political party posters carried images of the communist trinity- Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. One poster had a regular panoply of communist characters. I recognized the faces of a few, but there were at least five or more I didn't know. Castro was there, though.

Trivandrum was more of a stopover than a destination. Maybe I have said this before, but I don't like taking bus rides of over 5 hours (unless it is a night bus and then only if it arrives at a decent time, not 3:00 AM). Even though it was just a stopover, I did take an extra day to wander around the city and visit the zoo. That is where most of these pictures are from.

Have a look.

At The Moment

2008-01-17T18:36:00.000+09:00

View Larger Map

In case anyway was wondering, this is where I am today, January 17, 2008. I will be leaving tomorrow, though.

You'll notice my photo posts are a bit behind my actual location.

Land's End

2008-01-16T20:36:00.000+09:00

Just off the tip of India is a temple marking the spot where some swami meditated before setting off to change the world, and also a statue of a famous poet.

Kanyakumari, or Cape Comorin, was a nice change from the latest places I had been. There is not a lot to see or do there, but just taking the time to watch the sun set over the Arabian Sea for a couple of days was relaxing. If I had been more energetic, I could have watched the sun rise over the Bay of Bengal and set over in the Arabian Sea all in the same day. But at that time, getting up at six in the morning was a bit beyond me.

As you can see, many people come to watch the sun rise and set here.

I did, though, stand in three bodies of water all at one time. How many of you can say you have done that? Kanyakumari is the southern tip of India where the Bay of Bengal, the Indian ocean, and the Arabian Sea all meet. Oh sure, purists will say it is all one big body of water. But I wasn't the one who named things. I just take advantage of what is already available.

Heading north, there is another small village and some beach just past a headland separating it from Kanyakumari.

There is not much actual beach at the tip of the subcontinent. There is a little bit of a beach further north along the western coast, but as long as you are in site of the Cape, the beach is not really worth the time for a swim.

I could throw in a lot of technical terms with this photo, but that would presume I remember them all. If you are a sedimentary geologist you'll like it without any explanation.

As a geologist, though, (Yes, technically I was trained as a geologist, but I haven't done anything related to geology in many a year.) I found the garnet sand beach interesting. The gneiss, overlain by a laterite, that is exposed along the beach is rich in garnet. Nothing gem quality, but when the rock weathers, the garnet grains "float" to the top and coat the beach in places. it is a red sand beach of a different kind.

Oooo, ahhh! Look at it sparkle. OK, maybe the sparkles don't show in the photo, but believe me, it sparkled.

From here it is north along the coast and into the state of Kerla. Enjoy my pictures of the Cape.

Milestones

2008-01-10T21:21:00.000+09:00

Not that this time is any more significant than any other, but I thought I would jot down a few things.

I have been on the road now for over four months.
I have been in India for over one month.
The odometer on my GPS unit has passed 4000 km. It should probably be over 5000, but somewhere in China it mysteriously reset itself.
After two weeks, I think I have finally gotten rid of the diarrhea. And it took until the last of ten pills to do it.
I don't know what my weight is, but my cheeks are starting to hollow out a bit, and I have moved to the last notch in my belt (something I haven't done in about four years).
The image numbers on my camera have wrapped back around to "_0000" that means I have shot over 10000 photos with this camera. No, not all on this trip. And definitely not all "keepers."
The cheap sunglasses I bought in Tibet have finally broken. I was wondering when it would happen.

No nothing monumental in those milestones. Just a way for me to measure time as it passes.

A Nandi near the big temple.

Madurai is an OK place, but I don't think it lives up to the praise given it in the guide book. The main sight for tourists, the Sri Meenakshi temple is definitely worth a look, but I had recently become frustrated with the pricing structure and considered the camera charge just too high this time. So the images will have to live in my memory rather than in photos. Also, some parts of the temple were closed off so I couldn't have taken many good photos anyway.

Drying in the sun.

Actually, just as interesting to me was the sight of the daily laundry chores in the Vaigai river as I crossed it to visit the Gandhi museum.

The old fashioned way.

A large part of the museum really seemed to be the struggle of India against the west, and the part that Gandhi eventually played in it. There was a lot of reading involved, and through it all I noticed one theme that I expect the museum people probably didn't see coming.

A lot of the stories focus on the struggles and battles and many of them say something similar to ... The Indian people fought a valiant fight against the British (or Portuguese or whoever) ... but lost.

I don't know if the museum folk are aware of how it looks in English. Indians fought the fight, may have rarely won a battle, but eventually they lost the war with the West. I expect that is not quite the message they had hopped to give.

Part of what is left of a palace. The place must have really been something special.

One more thing about Madurai. Not every white guy walking around the streets in the evening smokes marijuana. We aren't all druggies. And after being asked every five or ten meters if I wanted to buy some, I was beginning to resent it. I mean if you are going to do something illegal, at least show a little discretion as to who your clients are to be. One guy asked me every time I walked by him. But then I think he was using too much of his own product. Usually I tell them that marijuana is illegal, and then they say that no, it is no problem. When I ask them if we should go to the police and ask if it is OK, they usually leave me alone.

Not many photos this time. Enjoy what you can.

The State of State Museums

2008-01-06T21:23:00.000+09:00

Still in Tamil Nadu state. Tanjore (Thanjavur) is a city with another World Heritage listed temple. (Maybe I should get a list and start checking off World Heritage sites.) And I think this is a temple that does deserve listing. It is rather impressive. Just the enormity of the main temple is a sight in itself.

This photo is deceiving. This tower is very tall.

Typical carvings on the towers. This particular tower has not been cleaned yet.

Also, the carvings around the temples are very involved. In addition, this particular temple has one of the largest Nandi (bull) statues in India. It was carved from a single piece of rock.

A big black bull which was the ride of Shiva (?).

Another site to visit in Tanjore is the Royal Palace and Museum. Sorry, no pictures inside the museum. It costs extra if you want to use a camera around the palace. Many places are like that in India, which is just another way to screw the tourist. Who goes on a vacation and doesn't take a camera?

Another thing about tourist sites in India is that some of them will have variable pricing schemes. Locals pay one price, but foreign tourists pay a higher price. This kind of thing really irks me. OK, maybe they want to raise more money to take care of the sites. Well why don't they charge the locals more. Usually more locals come than foreign tourists. Now before you think I am whining about a little bit more money, the foreigner price is usually 10 or 20 times more than the locals' price. As far as I know, no place in America charges foreign tourist a different price than local tourists. For whatever reason you do it, it still smacks of discrimination. Hasn't the time come to treat everyone as equals.

But I sneaked a picture from the top of the tower in the palace anyway.

The museum in the palace is "OK" but I do have to say it suffers the same fate as other state museums in India. Many state museums (at least that I have visited) seem very neglected. They are dark and dusty with peeling paint, moldy exhibits, and not a lot in the way of information or organization, and I don't just mean English information.

As you wander through a museum, you may be followed by a guard. It is not that he expects you will steal something. He is just there to turn off the lights and lock the doors as you leave each gallery. You may be one of the few visitors they have all day. It is a shame that the museums seem to have been forgotten by the people whom they were probably originally developed for.

There are often some very interesting, real museum quality, items hidden amongst the plethora of Hindu deities. You see something and wonder what is the story behind the "Decorative Glassware of Czechoslovakia." How did it get to this particular museum. And what really is the "Pipe like article made by blind boys of Jerusalem with silver inlay work of Arabic script."

I expect the cleaning lady sweeping up chips of paint fallen from the walls, who sees these items nearly every day, knows just as little about them as I do. It's a shame.

Here are the photos from Tanjore.

Environmentalism

2007-12-28T17:42:00.000+09:00

Do you know how hard it is not to litter in India?

I have kind of been proud of the fact that I don't litter. No, maybe not 100%, but pretty darn close to it. Since I was a youngster and became aware of "nature" I have done my best to be environmentally conscious. At times it is a hard task, but back then, "Woodsy the Owl" was my pal.

I will actually carry trash around in my pockets until I get a chance to throw it in a garbage can. You don't know what a pain that can be in Korea where public garbage cans are few and far between. And I spent about ten years there.

I normally try to avoid pictures of trash.

In India, however, public trash cans are even more rare. The fact that there is already trash and litter everywhere makes it tempting to just drop your refuse anywhere. I just can't do that though. I usually end up carrying it until I get back to the hotel room (who knows where the garbage from my room will end up, though). Or, if I see an obvious trash pile, one that looks like it is destined to be cleaned up eventually, I'll drop my trash there.

In all the places I have traveled so far in India, I have come to the conclusion that environmental concern on the local level pretty much seems to be lip service. Yes there may be policies and promotions, signs and services, but to the individual citizen, they pretty much don't mean a thing. Whether in the oceans, rivers, forests, or streets, as soon as the trash leaves their hand, it is someone else's problem. And therein lies the real problem, no personal responsibility for the public commons.

Gone are the days when the oceans, rivers, and valleys would swallow up anything you could toss into them. The world has changed. The people need to change too. All the people.

Anyway ... I wrote previously about my room in Pondicherry. The city isn't much more exciting. The beach area, what there is of it, certainly isn't anything to write home about, but I guess it is good for a stroll. There is some interesting architecture left over from when the French were the residents in charge, but the buildings are only nice if they have been kept up.

Actually I am not sure if this is new or old.

There are a lot of churches, too.

One of the more colorful of several churches in Pondicherry.

I never knew there was a St. Roch. Perhaps he is the patron saint of skinned knees and delivery dogs.

From Pondi I took my first train ride in India this trip to Trichy (Trichirappalli) which is more of a temple town.

On the train.

The Temples there were kind of nice. From the "Rock Fort" you get a pretty nice view of the whole area.

You have to take your shoes to climb the steps to the temple.

One of the entrance gates to the big temple complex.

The big temple complex there is nice too, but a lot of it is closed off to non-Hindus. Have a look at what I saw.

Just Like Whooville. Without the singing

2007-12-23T17:45:00.000+09:00

"Oh the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise!"

Let me rant a moment ... There are times here in India when I would like to just pack it all in and leave. Most of those times come while I am on a bus. It is not the bad road conditions; I have dealt with worse. It is not the crowded uncomfortable conditions; again I have dealt with worse. It is not even the dirt and dust. What makes the trips nearly unbearable is the incessant honking by the bus drivers.

In actuality, when driving in traffic, horns really don't do what you want them to do. No one is going to "Get out of the way, stupid," or "Speed up you slug," just because you honk your horn at them. They believe they have just as much right to be idiots on the road as you do. So I don't understand why in some countries, people use their horns so much. And I see absolutely no reason for laying on the horn for more than a second, let alone 30 seconds ( I kid you not, it has happened more than once here in India, and in moving traffic no less.)

I also don't understand why the bus drivers here take the chances they do. Passing on blind curves, with on coming traffic, and stopping at the last possible moment just because they think it will get them somewhere faster. Forgetting for a moment that they have the lives of a bus load of passengers in their hands (which is hard to do considering I am one of those passengers), don't they even care about their own lives? Do they have that much blind faith thinking their daily offerings at the temples and their icons and pictures of gods on the dashboard will actually protect them?

Even if they don't die, I am sure an accident won't do much for their career as a driver.

It is all really nearly incomprehensible to me.

I've Been Shat Upon

2007-12-19T21:20:00.000+09:00

I think in my entire life, before now, I have been crapped on by birds once, maybe twice. But since I have been in India, I have been hit three times. Three, in India alone. What? Have I be declared persona non grata by the avian population of the country? Luckily, two of them were on my hat. But one wet juicy load landed on the barrel of my camera lens. Fortunately it wasn't extended, but it was still a pain in the butt to clean. So anyway, if my pictures turn out "shitty" from now on, it's the birds' fault.

The top of a temple gateway.

A small garden Ganesha.

For not being a religious person, I seem to be entering a lot of churches, temples and such here in India. I would have entered a synagogue, but I was wearing shorts that day. Apparently the gods of Jews and Hindus frown on people dressed "immodestly." Yet the Christian churches will let anyone in no matter how you are dressed. Interesting.

Anyway ... Upon entering the churches, a lot of memories and old habits come back to me. I reach for the holy water fount to cross myself; I genuflect when crossing in front of the alter; and I begin to remember some of the prayers and proceedings of the mass. Well I guess it is bound to happen seeing as I went to church, probably from birth, until I was 19-20 years old.

The church of St. Thome. A minor basilica.

I am no longer a religious person, but I have to say it was interesting to actually experience a bit of biblical history. In Chennai I visited the Church of Saint Thome, and his tomb. This is the tomb of the St. Thomas, the apostle. Doubting Thomas, the guy who supposedly wanted to stick his fingers through the holes in Christ's hands. Over the years he made his way to India and was eventually killed and buried near Chennai. And I visited his tomb. The same place Pope John Paul II did. The tomb itself wasn't really that impressive, but hey, I was there.

One of the windows inside his church.

Something a bit more impressive were the temples and structures carved out of the rock and boulders in and around Mamallapuram. Several of the carvings are very impressive and I guess that is why it was granted UNESCO World Heritage status. One interesting thing, instead of carving things and then hauling them around, most of the images or structures were carved in place making use of the natural rock surface or boulders present.

Apparently water flowed over the central crack originally.

Five boulders carved into five "chariots".

And finally, the beach in Mamallapuram was nice also. Though you are not supposed to swim there due to strong riptides, it is still a nice place for sitting, walking or wading. In fact, one night I remember watching the full moon glistening on the blackness of the ocean. Suddenly I could see the blackness rise as a wave began to grow and advance toward me, only to crash into a foamy whiteness as it broke upon the shore. The waves sometimes brought in little luminous spots on the beach that I could capture in my hand. I don't know what it was that was glowing, but whatever it was sure was small, and pretty, too.

A few of these pictures are missing geotags, but they are all from Chennai (Madras) and Mamallapuram. Hope you like them. Boredom warning, I think there are about 172 in total.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2007-12-11T16:34:00.000+09:00

From Merdeka Square. Now they let you walk around on it.

In contrast to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was full of memories. Good memories, bad memories, and bittersweet memories.

I walked past one place and realized that was where I ate spilled potato chips off the ground because I was so hungry. I remembered the McDonald's where I would fill up my water bottle everyday because I didn't have money to buy a new bottle. And the initial cause of those two incidents, the place has changed some, but I still remembered the place where I got pick-pocketed.

I saw the place where I called home to have all my cards canceled and the stupid bank who wouldn't listen to me and ran my replacement credit card through the card reader causing it to be invalidated for a couple of days leaving me with no money again.

Some of the better memories include the park where I picked up some bright red seeds which I later made into a necklace for someone special. And all the places I visited and took photos with that someone special on a subsequent trip. All those picture spots happen to be the locations of the bittersweet memories, also. You can probably guess why.

Still, even though I remembered a lot of places, I would be in Kuala Lumpur for at least 5 days waiting for my India visa, so I decided I might as well make the best of it. One nice thing I did was visit the KanChing falls outside the city to try and find a geocache.

One of the may cascades at the falls.

I didn't find the cache, but the scenery of the falls more than made up for my failure. and the jungle was full of life. Lizards, termites, and leeches, oh my!

The first leech I found was on the ground, on the move. As soon as my leg swung close it stood still, pointing straight up. As I backed out of the way, it actually followed me. It must have sensed my body heat, or something. The second leech I found on my ankle. He was on the move too, north. Since he didn't have time to grab a hold of me very well, it only bled a little when I yanked him off.

The one who didn't suck my blood.

The falls were really beautiful, but at times rather high. I slipped once and nearly fell off as cliff, but I caught myself. That made me wonder how long my body would have lain there at the bottom of the falls until someone found it. The area I slipped was in a less climbed location of the falls. How long would it have been until some would wonder where I was and why I was out of contact? Months, maybe? And then they would have to try and find out where I was. The could have probably narrowed it down to the last city, but beyond that ...

I did find some other geocaches in Kuala Lumpur. One near the bird park, one in a nice park outside the downtown area, and one near the ASEAN sculpture garden. Geocaches can take you to some pretty interesting places.

I went up in the Petronas twin towers, but you can only go up to the sky-bridge, so it is really not that impressive. Still it is one more place where I can say, "Been there, done that."

At night from behind.

I ended up having to stay in Kuala Lumpur seven days. I think I pretty much did nearly every touristy thing possible, especially if it was free or cheap. By the time I left, I was certainly ready to go.

Have a look at what I saw around Kuala Lumpur.

Oh, by the way, these photos may not have geotags associated with them or may in fact have incorrect geotags. I had forgot to match the times in my camera and GPSr. Sorry.

Singapore

2007-12-08T18:12:00.000+09:00

The symbol of Singapore. A mer-lion.

Singapore wasn't really meant to be a stop on this trip, but since I didn't really want to go back to HongKong on the round trip ticket, I figured I would break my flight there and pick up my visa for India. Easy peasy, right? No, not so.

It was Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights, when I was in Singapore.

But it was nice to be back in a "modern" city again. Yes, Hong Kong is pretty modern, but it still has that hectic feel that comes with Chinese culture. Singapore is a lot more laid back. In fact, on my first trip around the world, Singapore was the first place I visited where I thought to myself, "I can live here."

The arts center, sometimes called the durian by locals.

There wasn't a lot new to see, but I did visit a couple of places I missed the first time. First though, I had to visit the sight of my big break into show business- the filming location for "Bugis Street". It was completely different. It looked nothing like it did 12 years ago. New malls, new buildings, and even new streets. I guess it was a bit much to expect things to have remained the same. Though I read that most of the development was done to "improve" on the reputation that that location originally had.

I wandered around some places that I am sure I visited on that trip so long ago, but I was pretty hard pressed to remember anything I saw. Whether this is a failing of my memory or just the never ending march of time and development, who knows?

Since I didn't remember much of what I saw I thought I might as well visit some new places. So it was off to Sentosa island. It is a group of small islets just south of the island of Singapore that have pretty much been turned into a quasi-theme park with the theme being 'the beach'. It does feel a bit artificial at times, but who really cares since the reason you are going there is the beach, and that is what they give you.

Some nice beaches, actually.

The island is also where I found my first geocache on this trip. I had been looking since I set out, but was rather unlucky only finding locations with the cache missing or not being able to find the caches at all. If all you have is the Lat/Lon location, it is sometimes difficult to actually find the cache. For those of you who don't know what a geocache is but may be interested, go to geocaching.com and have a look.

Also here you can visit the southern most location of continental Asia. The place is a small islet just about a hundred meters south of Sentosa. Now if you are like me, you maybe be thinking, wait a minute, if it is an island, how can it be "continental Asia"? Well, apparently since Singapore is connected to mainland Malaysia by bridges, and Sentosa island is connected to Singapore by several bridges, and this little islet is connected to Sentosa by a foot bridge, that makes it part of continental Asia. Yeah, I don't buy their logic either, but I was there.

I also visited a jungle reserve/water catchment area north of the city that was rather nice. It is secondary jungle, but it is still nice to walk around in and see all the trees and such. You can see monkeys, birds, and even monitor lizards. They also have a canopy walk which is a bridge that allows you to walk through the forest at the top of the trees. It was a nice, but sweaty, day.

The reservoir with the jungle in the background.

The only other highlight of Singapore was that I got to meet an Internet friend I had been chatting with for a while. It is nice to actually see in person someone you have only talked with before.

There are not many photos from Singapore, but have a look. Hope you enjoy them.

Still of Cambodia

2007-12-04T18:47:00.000+09:00

But no longer of Siem Reap. Phnom Phen was nice, but not quite ans memorable as the temples around Angkor.

Independence monument.

My visit to the "Killing Fields" was a rather somber experience, as was the prison where they kept some people before killing them. It is something rather hard to imagine, but rather hard to deny when you have the evidence right in front of you. It is sad that Cambodia now has that period as part of its history, but then all history seems to be filled with moments like that. It is too bad we seem so poor at learning from history.

Inside the monument at the Killing Fields.

Elsewhere there was the royal palace and associated temple, and a few other temples here and there, but I think maybe the best thing was just strolling along the riverside area and watching life go by.

Part of the royal palace.

The snacks and food were easy to come by, but I didn't take advantage of the fried crickets, tarantulas, cockroaches, bats, sparrows, and other things you would never imagine people would eat. The corn on the cob was certainly good though, as were the fruit shakes.

Food, glorious food. (?)

The Russian (tourist) market was OK to stroll around in for a while, but seeing as I rarely buy souvenirs, it didn't hold my interests for too long. Probably more interesting were the real markets with their crowds, oddities, and inevitable smells. And, man oh man, was it good to get iced sugarcane juice again. Pressed straight straight from the cane. I tried a packaged product once from a store but it was just not the same as fresh squeezed. If you have never had it before, it is kind of hard to describe. No water added, it tastes a bit like sugar-water but with flavor, kind of a planty flavor, maybe. Mmm, Mmm, good. True, I was breaking a cardinal rule of street food, but it is so much better when cold. Besides, with all the places I have been and things I have eaten, my digestive system has become pretty hardened. My stomach rarely rebels against me. The back end may go off due to something from time to time, but it rarely lasts too long.

Cambodia Part III

2007-12-02T17:14:00.000+09:00

OK, here is the final set of photos from around Siem Reap.

I hope you saw something you liked in those photos.

I am not yet ready to move on to a new country yet. I have some photos of Phnom Phen to share with you next time. Here is a sample.

You know, I don't think this is something I would ever give to my child.

What size do you suppose this is, maybe "L"? Or the more important question, what device does it go into?

Cambodia Part II

2007-11-30T21:50:00.000+09:00

I'll just post the next set Siem Reap pictures without babbling on about any of them.

Have a look and let me know what you think if you have time.

India

Since I am in India, Let me just jot down a few thoughts while I am at the computer.

Here you always have to be careful and watch where you walk. It can be kind of difficult because your desire is to look up and see all the things going on around you. But it certainly is necessary to keep on eye on where you step. You never know if you are going to step into an open sewer, into the sewer overflowing on the street, on a beggar, or in a pile of shit- be it of the dog, cow, or human variety. After a while you a kind of get a sixth sense about walking and your eyes don't have to be pointing down all the time. Be careful though, from time to time your sixth sense may fail you. Luckily for me it hasn't lead me into an open sewer. I have stepped into something overflowing onto the street, but I am wondering if it might have been safer stepping into a pile of shit.

The place I stayed in Pondi was rather dreary. Peeling paint, yellowed bathroom, spotted sheets. It is certainly not a place I would stay if I was traveling with someone (unless they were as nonchalant about things as me), but it was just a bed for two nights, cheap, and I didn't feel like wandering around anymore in the heat of the day. One bright spot, though, was that just off the balcony, I could see a pair of eagles nesting in a coconut palm. When I was at the room I could hear them screech to each other and watch them fly in and out. So maybe every dark cloud does have a silver lining. You just have to look hard enough to find it.

Cambodia

2007-11-29T00:02:00.000+09:00

The temples and ruins around Siem Reap are truly amazing. But I have to say, Angkor Wat was not quite as impressive as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong. I still thought it was incredible; but having wanted to see it for such a long time, I think I built up a certain image of it in my mind. And when the actual buildings didn't quite match what I had imagined, I was a bit, just a bit, disappointed. In actuality, to me, some of the other temples/complexes there were more impressive than Angkor Wat.

Of course, the one temple all the guides said I "must see" was further away than the rest and thus cost more to go to. it was small but nice, especially the carvings, but "must see"? eh ... That one temple being further away than the rest brings up a problem with touring the area around Angkor. You can either buy a one-day ticket or a three-day ticket.

A two day ticket would probably be better for many people since the drivers or guides tend to make your forays to the temples end rather early in the day if you started out early in the morning. This is to give you something to visit on that third day. With a two day ticket, you would stretch those day out longer to get to the more distant temples instead of wasting the afternoons and spending the last day visiting only one or two temples, just so you don't waste the third day of your ticket. And, you wouldn't have to pay for a third day of driving. Sounds a bit complicated, but I think it would work.

Of course I am looking at this from a skinflint's perspective. If you have the time and the money, then definitely take your time and enjoy the temples. There is certainly enough to see there, and you may want to spend some time contemplating some special place.

One other thing that was interesting, when heading out to the temples, you certainly know when you are within the Angkor Archaeological Park. Outside the boundaries of the park there are hardly any "real" trees. Palm trees and a few young trees here and there, but nothing like you see when you cross that invisible line which means you have entered the park. Within the park, all the trees are protected and some of them have been there for a long time. Huge, stately, giant trees. Real trees. Maybe you can tell I have a penchant for the large and incredible in the natural world.

There is not much more I can say about the area. It really needs to be experienced. My pictures certainly won't do the area justice, but perhaps they can give you a taste of what you could expect to see. But let me warn you. I took a lot of photos, and I mean a lot. And when going through them it was difficult to toss any out. I am sure there are some that I kept that I shouldn't have, but to me, any that weren't blurry still said something special. I did toss some out though. I wouldn't want you to get too bored. Don't feel obligated to look through each and every one. Nothing is worse than having to sit through uncle Joe's travel slides. You are better off clicking the link and looking at the gallery view of all the photos. Then you can pick and choose the ones that strike your fancy and that you want to take a closer look at. Oh, and remember, they are geo-coded, so you can see where they were taken on the Google map, in satellite view.

I hope you find something you like. Here is the first set. (Yes, first... of three.)

I Oughtta Be In Pictures

2007-11-27T00:09:00.000+09:00

Maybe I missed my true calling in life. Perhaps I should have become an International Movie Background Actor. Then again maybe not, but life sometimes conspires to send things your way that make you wonder.

About twelve years ago, on my last around-the-world trip I was in Singapore and acted as an extra in a movie. It was three days, (nights actually, since that was when they were shooting) of a lot of sitting around and a little acting. It was an interesting experience, and I got paid for my time which made it even more worth while. The name of the movie was "Bugis Street" or something like that. I never saw it, so if you happen to track it down, let me know what you think of my acting. I was the one in the sailor suit. Well, one of the ones in a sailor suit.

Yesterday in Chennai, India, I did it again. They needed westerners to fill up a club scene they were shooting. We, several others from the guest houses, were taxied up to Chennai from Mamallapuram and spent about twelve hours doing a lot of sitting around, standing for the cameras, and very little reacting for shots. We also got a free lunch and 600 rupees ($15 US).

India's movie industry pumps out hundreds of movies a year, but I have to say, after sitting around and watching how things work, I wonder about the quality of those movies. Today, they certainly weren't to concerned about continuity in this movie, especially considering many scenes were shot previously before today's group of westerners even showed up. In one scene I was running out one door, and in a different angle shot of the same scene I was told to run out a different door. Extras, props, and actors were moved around willy-nilly without much concern for what had gone previously.

What we shot that day was a fight scene inside some kind of space/computer themed nightclub. I didn't plan it at all, but I am pretty sure I appeared in about 75% of the scenes shot. The camera happened to be looking right where I was standing each time. That doesn't necessarily mean I would be recognizable in the film, or that the takes I was in would even be used (though there were so few actual takes shot, they will almost have to use each one). But keep an eye out for a goofy-looking guy in a gray t-shirt and light green pants. That will be me.

The movie is called "Kurubi" which means The Sparrow. It is an Indian (Tamil) movie about drug runners. It stars a very popular Indian movie star named Vijay.
So on January 15th, run to your nearest cinema (If you
are in India anyway. The rest of you will have to wait.) and see "Kurubi" staring... me!

Incredible (?) India

2007-11-21T23:11:00.000+09:00

Apparently I do have a few people who read my blog. So I thought I would just let you know that Internet access in India may be a bit harder to come by, so my posts here may be a bit longer in coming. I promise I will post when I can, though.

Oh, and just to let you know, if you have never been to India before, Chennai (Madras) may not be the best introduction to the country. It was certainly cheap from southeast Asia, but arriving here gave me one of those "moments."

Some of you may know what kind of moments I mean. As I ride through traffic in the auto-rickshaw, fearing for the lives of those around us (I have already given up on my own life. You kind of have to do that when you make the decision to ride in one of these in India. If I go, I go. Not much I can do about it.), the stench/smells, the noise/sounds, the pollution/ uh...pollution, the arguing/haggling with the driver, everything just makes me think, what the heck have I gotten myself into.

Still it is all part of the journey, and as they say, the journey is the reward. But sometimes you just have to wonder why the reward for this particular event isn't any higher. It does get better, though. And just being here is a reward in itself.

Ah Diversity

2007-11-18T22:04:00.000+09:00

Korea is a nice place. China is a nice place. But I have to say, it is certainly nice to be in a more cosmopolitan city again.

(From the peak on Hong Kong island.)

It's nice to see people who look different, dress different, have different skin colors, different religions, different mannerisms, and look at the world from several different points of view. It is even nice to be in a place where people speak several different languages even if I don't understand any of them, OK maybe I understand English. Hong Kong may be Chinese in origin, and largely British by design, but it does stand as a city of the world.

(And they aren't afraid to put art installations like this.)

I have been to Hong Kong a few times now, so it is all pretty much old hat to me now. OK, slight exaggeration, but I didn't have to worry about much. I was in Hong Kong as the end of my China trip and as a jumping off point for more of Asia. The next stop would be Cambodia. The travel agent booked me some pretty cheap tickets that went HK > Singapore > Siem Reap (overland) Phnom Phen > Singapore > HK. I didn't actually want to come back to Hong Kong. I was hoping to go from Singapore to India. But the travel agent said I should just take the booking and throw out the last ticket because it was cheaper this way than one way tickets. Fine by me. Cheaper is always better. I would later rue that decision to not come back to HK, but that is another story.

There wasn't really much I wanted to do in HK since I have been here before, the last time about three years ago. But in all the times I have been to Hong Kong, I never visited Macau. In fact I always used to think that Macau was to the east of HK.

Ahhh, not so intrepid but not so geographically smart world traveler.

I figured I had better go this time since who knows when I would be back this way again. So I hopped on a ferry headed west. Macau is like the poorer cousin of Hong Kong. Not as big, not as shiny, not quite as modern, but it is still interesting, especially because it is not as modern. Oh sure there are several large shiny buildings, most of them casinos, but it is the smaller, older architecture that makes going to Macau worth while, for me at least.

It is interesting to see the mix of Chinese and Portuguese culture as opposed to Chinese and British culture. The older houses and churches make for a nice mix as you walk around the city. The fact that they have kept a lot of the older buildings, and incorporated them into the modernization of the downtown area, is certainly a plus for the tourism industry.

That is if people actually venture outside the casinos. Being one of the big draws of the city, I am not so sure how often regular tourists actually leave the air conditioned comfort of those dens of sin (Look who's talking. I grew up in "Sin City."). I noticed that several big name casinos from the ole' stomping grounds have a presence in Macau. In fact one of them, the Wynn, looks like a scaled down copy of casino in Las Vegas.

However, I don't know if the casinos are the same inside. In Las Vegas, the casinos have large open doorways where swarms of people can file in and out at their leisure. In Macau though, the entrance to the actual casinos is usually a small hallway where you have to go through a metal detector and a bag search. I was intimidated by the big burly men in tuxedos. Slightly embarrassed due to my dress of shorts, sandals, and sweaty t-shirt. Concerned that they might look down or scoff at me when they would have to rummage through my dirty backpack only to find my lunch of peanut butter, crackers, and fruit. So I didn't venture inside an actual casino.

But then I thought about it for a while. However I looked, my entering would be paying their salary. Who are they, working peons, to scoff at me, the international world traveler. Be afraid of entering casinos? Ha! I scoff at them. I grew up in the real casino city. The city that all other casino cities hope they can be. I have been inside casinos probably from the time I was 10 years old, or maybe younger.

I still didn't go inside one, though. I just didn't feel like it.

Most of these pictures are from Macau. Hope there is something that strikes your fancy.

The (4th) Happiest Place on Earth

2007-11-16T22:06:00.000+09:00

I lived for many years in Korea just across a small sea from Japan and Tokyo Disneyland, and I never went. Maybe some day in the future.

I was recently in Hong Kong, and I decided I had better visit Disneyland Hong Kong now, so I don't have to come back later.

I wasn't first in line, and I didn't run to get this picture.

It was a really nice day. I got there early, to beat the crowds, only to find out that the park opened one hour later than I thought it did and that there was no crowd. It was a Wednesday so maybe that is why.

Disneyland HK is very nearly a copy of the early original Disneyland. But I did notice that everything is smaller. And I don't just mean smaller in land area. The buildings on MainStreet are smaller in scale. Sleeping Beauty's castle is much smaller than the original. And some other things just struck me as being not quite right. Maybe everything is smaller in scale because Asians are generally smaller. Ha ha, that's a joke ma' boy.

Actually, a combination of the park being smaller and me arriving on a week day meant that I really only would have needed the afternoon and evening hours to see everything. As it was, I did see everything, including all the shows, and rode several of the rides twice. The whole day was rather leisurely paced, which was nice for a change.

Everything was very familiar, but it was a bit disconcerting hearing Mickey and the other characters speak in Cantonese. In Hong Kong, Mickey's name is pronounced "my-ee-kay". And not that I can understand Cantonese, but Donald Duck was completely unintelligible.

Even the western characters spoke Chinese during the parade.

The whole park was decorated for the Halloween holiday and two of the rides had a slightly Halloween theme. Also at night, they had a special Halloween parade.

Yes, that is a "white" pumpkin for Donald and I don't know what his bill is supposed to be made of.

Wooo, Spooky!

One highlight of the visit had to be the firework show. Disneyland sure knows how to amaze.

Enjoy the rest of the photos.

Crap!

2007-11-16T21:41:00.000+09:00

Crap, crap, crap!

This trip seems to be turning into the "Bad-luck-hurry-up-and-wait" trip.

The last time I went around the world many years ago it was the "Near-disaster" trip. Back then, I missed several big problems by just weeks or months early or late. In Egypt, I arrived after a major train fire. In southern India, I missed the bubonic plague by only a couple of weeks. In Southeast Asia a kidnapping and killing changed my plans about going into Cambodia, and the volcano erupting put the kibosh on my visiting it in Indonesia. I arrived in Japan about a month after the Kobe earthquake. And there were a couple of smaller scale incidents after I left several places. None of these timings were planned. It was all just coincidence.

So far on this trip I have had to spend extra days in Beijing, had to leave Tibet in a rush because my visa was expiring and could only get a ticket to Xiamen which meant I had to pay for a whole new visa rather than an extension. I got stuck in Louyang because of no ticket out due to the holiday. I stopped in Singapore only to find out that I couldn't get the India visa there.

Now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the visa process is only supposed to take five days, but there was no joy for me today at the visa office. This means I have to spend extra days in Kuala Lumpur (At least until Monday. Please, please let my visa come Monday.), and I have to change the date of my ticket to India for which I have to pay a penalty of 250 Rupees (Sure, it is only six bucks, but it is still a pain.)

Not a very auspicious start to the trip. Yes, it has been a good trip, but these little niggling incidences of bad luck are sure a pain. And they cost money. Yes, I have the money to spend, but I would rather not have to spend it like that.

I sure hope my luck changes for the better, and soon!

Not Quite Fantasy Island

2007-11-12T21:34:00.000+09:00

But still a nice place to spend a couple of days.

From Hangzhou I headed south to Xiamen and the island of Gulangyu. The town on the mainland isn't much, but the island is a nice place to visit and relax a little. No private vehicles are allowed on the island at all, not even bicycles. But then they really aren't needed. You (meaning I) can easily walk around the island in about four hours or so. But, for those who would rather, the tourist services on the island have some electric carts that can be ridden to most places of interest.

What people go there to see actually, are the small beaches and parks and some of the architecture around the island. I contemplated taking a swim on one of the beaches. The water was a bit cool, but the heat of the day made it oh so very tempting. I ended up just wading, though. I had a twelve hour train ride the next day and I didn't fancy hauling around wet clothes.

(Actually not on the island, but it looks very James-Bond-Moonraker-ish, doesn't it?)

(I rather like this picture, as long as the monitor is not too dark.)

From Xiamen it was on to Guangzhou. My last stop before I left China. Well the real China. Technically Hong Kong is China, but it doesn't much feel like it. Anyway ...

Guangzhou is a OK place. There are a couple of interesting things to see and nice places to visit. Unfortunately, as per how my luck seems to be going this trip, my time there coincided with a big wholesalers convention which meant all the room prices were nearly doubled. Even the dorm beds. That was certainly a bummer.

(You can get all kinds of things from the markets in Guangzhou, even things you would never expect someone would want to buy.)

The river is maybe the best place to be based. Most of the things to see are rather scattered around the city, though. They are not really too hard to get too, but some walking is involved.

Walking along the river is nice, but be careful. Don't assume, like I did, you can just walk along the river from one point to another. I had crossed a bridge at one point along the river and could see where I needed to go up river, so I just started walking. Unfortunately, at one point, access to the riverside was closed. No problem I thought, I'll just turn inland a bit, follow some roads and then walk back to the river. After a rather circuitous route I ended up back at the river only to walk a little more and find out access was closed again. So it was back out to the city streets. This time my route to find access to the river kept taking me further and further from the riverside, especially since the river started to bend the other way. It was getting dark. I gave myself 30 more minutes to find the river, and I did. Only to find that riverside access was blocked yet again. I started to go back out to the streets and find a new path, but it was getting late and the further I went, the further I would have to go back. It was time to admit defeat and head back. Hopefully I could remember the way I came.

Luckily I found my way all the way back to the bridge, crossed it, and went back the subway station from where I had originally started. What I thought would be a 30 minute walk back to the hotel, what should have been a 30 minute walk back to the hotel, turned into a nearly 2 hour adventure wandering around the streets of Guangzhou in the dark. It would have been nice if there was something to see, but it was just a dusty city.

One other thing, if you plan on running your own retail business, then you should certainly visit Guangzhou and set up a few business connections. Guangzhou is wholesale heaven- everything from holiday decorations, to toys (be careful which toys you choose, though), to ceramics, to buttons and beads, probably anything for any type of shop you would want.

Before I leave China, I have to make one more comment. It pertains to something that every country does, but some more than others. While living in Korea, I came to believe that Korea and Koreans were very good at it. But after visiting China for only two months I have come to realize that China is the master of Self-Congratualtion. In China, especially as a tourist, you get the impression that nothing bad ever happens there, and if it does, it is due to some other nation. China has the best of everything and does the best at everything. China can do no wrong, and if something does seem maybe a bit wrong to you, it is because you are probably looking at it from the wrong perspective. The Chinese view is the only view.

Enjoy the photos. Most are from Gulangyu, a couple from Xiamen (the temple shots), and the last third or so are from Guangzhou.

Visitors

2007-11-03T19:06:00.000+09:00

I thought I would post these pictures now since they are of a timely nature. I am in Cambodia at the moment, in Phnom Phen. (I'll get the pictures from previous places up as soon as I can.) I happened to be touring the royal palace as the same time as this man.

If you are not sure who it is, take a look at the hair. Second clue, he is an official from a country near where I used to live. Nope, sorry, it is not brother Kim, Jong Il. This guy is way too tall. But he is some top-vice-chief-premier or something or other from North Korea. Sorry, his name eludes me at the moment.

Ah, his name is Kim, Yong Il and he is the premier of North Korea. He certainly got the royal treatment while he was there. They closed galleries to regular tourists, rolled out a carpet for him to walk on, and had ice cold water wherever he might stop for a minute. I was on my way out of the palace when suddenly someone just pushed me back. Apparently I couldn't exit that way while the official car was waiting to receive his premier-ness.

So there you have it. My latest brush with greatness. Or at least semi-important-ness.

Hangzhou

2007-10-30T21:14:00.000+09:00

This city is the location of the famed West Lake in China. No, not that west lake or the other one, but the original West Lake.

It is actually a nice place once you get out of the city proper and to the lake shore. Nice enough to stay a few days. I stayed two days, but could have stayed at least a third if it wasn't for my expiring visa. I had places to go, things to see, people to meet. Well, OK, actually no people to meet, but I did have places I wanted to go and things I wanted to see before they kicked me out of China.

The West Lake is surrounded by vegetation; not much, but enough to disguise the more urban nature of the city around it. Walking around the lake, though a bit far, is a nice experience and lets you get a quick peek at some of the tourist sights in the area. Then you can always go back to the ones you want to visit later.

I wanted to ride a bike around the area, but my hostel gave out its last bike just before I had a chance to put my name down. I could have rented one of the many bikes for offer around the lake, but they were all the same kind, and not the kind I was hoping for. The ones for offer were for tooling around the lake, single gear, small wheels, odd frame, and I was hoping for a bike that would let me go further afield. I didn't really trust those bikes to be reliable over the long haul. Oh well, at least I'll have something to do the next time I am in the area.

Hangzhou has a nice botanical park that is worth visiting for a while. Not so much for the different species of trees and plants (though they do have them), but just for having a nice walk in the woods. There is a whole section of plum trees that I assume must be very nice in spring during plum blossom time. There is also a small sequoia tree that was given to the Chinese premier by president Nixon. For those that don't know, the sequoia is an incredible tree that grows amazingly tall with an incredible girth. Some are big enough to drive a car through. The one in Hangzhou has quite a ways to go yet, especially considering they generally live for easily several hundred years.
I thought I would add a quick explanation of a couple of the photos, or you may wonder "What the heck did he take that picture for?"

I am more of a dog person, I think, but I like cats too. I took this picture just because of the cat's eye. It actually made me do a double-take.

The "decorative" fish in this pond are a lot bigger than they look in the photo. One of these fellas could easily swallow my fist and arm up past my elbow.

This rather sad looking creature I rescued from a pond, luckily not the one with the big fish. Apparently he had jumped down onto a ledge and couldn't get back up. When he tried to jump up to an adjacent ledge, he would fall into the pond, and paddle until he could claw his way onto the original rock. I just reached down and pulled him up to higher ground, somewhere where he could walk away safely. He looked so pathetic I had to take a picture.

I think all of the rest of the photos are pretty self explanatory. I hope you enjoy them.

Observations on Traveling in China

2007-10-27T21:50:00.000+09:00

Now that I have left China, I thought I would give you some of my observations on traveling here. These are really just random thoughts that popped into my head at random times. They are both good and bad, but not specific praise or condemnation of China or anything Chinese.

Ride the train from Lanzhou to Xian during the day if possible. The views of the river and canyon can be amazing at times.
Men in China need to learn to aim better. Close enough isn't good enough whether it's a urinal or a squat. Flushing would be a good thing to teach the general populace too.
China has some tall women. I am not sure it the average height for women in China is more than Korea, but the plethora of tall ones sure do stand out.
Drinking soda at a higher altitude seems to make you (me anyway) belch more quickly than usual.
China has some real serious problems with its environment
I don't know if I will ever be able to think that another city has clean air, after being in Tibet.
Chinese are loud talkers, even louder than other countries I have been too.
Cup ramen (ramyun) comes with a fork in China rather than chopsticks.
One of the best sounds in the world is wind blowing through pine needles, but if you haven't got pine, casurina works well too.
The stars in Tibet, outside the cities, are amazing, just like in Africa.
How come on my long train journeys (8 hours or more), I always seem to get stuck next to some disgusting people- the spitters, the smokers, the trash droppers, the smelly ... I am sure there must be some "regular" people riding the hard seats. Why can't I sit next to them? Or at least one good looking woman?
China has both coin and paper "cents". Some cities will more often give paper, others coins, as change. In some cities people don't want to accept the coins and in other cities they don't want the paper.
Why are train personnel hawking products like socks, flashlights, and other cheap crap on the train? It is bad enough I am captive in the hard seat section. Must I be forced to listen to their sales spiels too?
Time on the train seemed to go faster when i had something to write about. Unfortunately that wasn't often enough. I guess I could have written about other things that popped into my brain, but it was probably too personal to put it into my blog, so why bother.
Singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" in your head doesn't help much on long train rides. The song is over too soon.
It is interesting how the chant of the touts in Shanghai changes from day to night. Day- "Bags, DVDs, Shoes?" Night- "Bags, DVDs, Shoes, Massage, Girl, Hashish?"

I am sure there were many more random thoughts that ran through my brain, but these are all the ones I happened to write down. They will give you a fair accounting of how my brain works at times.

Suzhou and Disillusionment

2007-10-22T11:55:00.000+09:00

Suzhou is a nice day trip out of Shanghai. I guess maybe I spending the night there might be nice, but I pretty much walked around, and I do mean around, the city's sights in about six hours. A little more time and I might have stopped in and seen a few more of the gardens for which the city is famous. It's gardens are listed on UNESCO's list of world heritage sites.

I have to say, though, that after having traveled through a fair bit of China, it can get a bit expensive. It is not so much the transportation, accommodations, food, or any one thing in particular, but the combination of them all together.

One thing that does stand out as being an inordinately large portion of the total cost is entrance tickets to sights. This park requires a ticket, that garden another, this temple actually requires two tickets. You (me anyway) almost feel entry-ticketed to death.

And the price of these entry tickets are not that much cheaper than in other countries. Also, I have to say, in my opinion, with the exception of a few places here and there and several places in Shanghai, the cost to get into each of these temples, gardens, parks and buildings is generally not worth it. Yes, some particular sight might be interesting, but usually certainly not worth what you had to pay to get in to see it.

Toward the end of my time in China, I stopped going into places, especially temples, when I saw the ticket price. I would just look at it from the outside. After all, unless there is something particularly special about a temple, one is pretty much like another.

Off on a tangent ...

One other thing about temples in China that turned me off is how Buddhism (and Taoism) has been turned into just another way to make money. And I don't just mean from ticket sales. Everything from incense, to medals, to statuary, to jewelry, to "special" donations all bring in a heck of a lot of money into a place that is supposed to venerate the idea of doing without, of giving up all earthly desires (money I think being a big one) and leading a monastic life.

Yes, I understand the need for money for the upkeep and care of the temple and those who care for it, but from what I have seen, it certainly looks to me that there is a heck of a lot more money going in than coming out. I also understand that some temples do actually do do community and charity work, but still, when a new golden idol is the main feature of the temple, it seems to me that priorities may be a bit skewed.

Another thing is how Buddhism, which is not really a religion to begin with (rather more a way of life) has been changed into a religion of begging. Of all the statues in a temple, the ones that acquire the most donations, get the most money thrown to them, are the ones representing long life, and the ones representing fortune in life or business

In one Taoist temple, one statue representing the protection of citizens from corrupt city and government officials had only a few coins scattered here and there, while the one representing making a lot of money in business had a pile of money in front of it. Personally, my money would go to the protection from corruption spirit. If no one was corrupt, then people might not have to go begging for good luck in their business.

These photos are mostly from Suzhou. There are a couple at the beginning and end from Shanghai.

On Kungfu ...

2007-10-16T19:45:00.000+09:00

Speaking of the Shaolin Temple ...

I am not a real big martial arts fan, but I thought I couldn't go to Luoyang and not visit the birth place of Kungfu. It is a temple and an actual school for teaching Kungfu. They have foreign students, including Hollywood movie stars, real and wannabe, who stay and learn there.

Still though, as the bus drove past the temple and I noticed the parking lot, the first thing that came to mind was "Disneyland." True, it was the National day golden week holiday, so it was probably more crowded than usual, but man there were a lot of cars there.

In actuality, it was in many ways like Disneyland, but without the rides.

Disneyland has themes- Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Adventureland, etc. The Shaolin Temple has a theme- Kungfu.
Disneyland has shows. The Shaolin Temple has martial arts shows.
Disneyland has characters wandering around for your amusment. The Shaolin Temple has actual Kungfu students positioned around, shouting and hitting things for your amazement.
Disneyland sells lots of snacks, souvenirs, and assorted crap. The Shaolin Temple also sells snacks (although of an unfamiliar variety), souvenirs, and lots of crap.
Disneyland has interesting buildings and things to see. The Shaolin Temple has, well, actual temples and stupas to see.

So in essence, the Shaolin Temple is just like Disneyland, only without the fun. No, it is not that bad. Maybe just not my cup of tea. I was more impressed by the mountain up behind the temple.

Oh, the Shaolin Temple does have one thing Disneyland doesn't have ... Red Army guards tromping around.

Here are some photos for you. A few from Xian, some from Luyong and the Longmen Grottos, and finally from the Shaolin Temple. Enjoy

Kidnapped! No, Not Really

2007-10-14T20:55:00.000+09:00

I was just going to write a short bit about how unprofessional bus drivers are here, but it has turned into more than that. Bear with me and you'll see how.

As a lot, they do seem to be rather unprofessional, though. Of course I haven't ridden with every bus driver in China. I can only make inferences from the ones I have.

First of all, it seems they feel they are the kings of the road, especially when it comes to pedestrians. Get out of the way or I am not responsible for what happens. In some cities in China, the bus driver has a button he can press, other than the horn, that plays a recorded spoken warning to those outside on the street. I assume it says, "Get out of the way, idiot," or something to that effect. On one bus I rode, the driver kept his finger on the button nearly the whole time.

Also, bus drivers know they have you by the short curlys, especially private bus drivers who work a particular route. You either get on the bus or don't; they really don't care. They know there is pretty much no other option than to pay the fare and get on board, unless you feel like walking. And once you have paid, that is all they seem to care about. If they drive like idiots and people are knocked out of their seats it doesn't really matter much to them.

But I have to say, the most unprofessional thing that I have seen so far happened to me the other day.

I had decided to go to the Shaolin Temple. There are always "private buses" that run to the tourist sites, but usually these kind of buses stop at "extra" spots along the way, ostensibly to show you something more, but really holding you hostage until enough people from your bus buy enough things to make the driver's kickback worth while, or until enough people complain loudly enough. When possible, I try to avoid these buses like the plague.

That is why I went to the actual bus station and bought an actual bus ticket, and got on an actual bus headed to the Shaolin Temple. As we got underway, The bus driver seemed to be driving slower than normal, but I figured that was just because we were still in the city. Eventually we passed the last checkpoint. About a kilometer or so later the driver pulled the bus to the side of the road and waited. After a few minutes we were told we had to change to another bus. Why? This bus was running fine. When I boarded the other bus, I found out why.

We had been hijacked! Or more correctly, we had been sold, to a "tour bus" company! When we all got on the new bus, someone up front stood up and started yammering about something. I figured it out when all the heads on the bus turned to the left at once. This guy was playing the nice tour guide. Crap, I thought, this can't end well.

We tooled along and the "guide" pointed out things every now and then. Then he got up, said something, and the bus started to turn left. Here it comes, I thought. But then my spirits were buoyed. Another passenger on the bus stood up and shouted something about this not being the way to the Shaolin temple. Apparently this has happened before, because the driver stopped, right in the middle of the intersection, backed up, and then continued on the road to the temple. Yeah!

All seemed well. The "guide" didn't say another thing until the Shaolin temple was in sight. There it was. We were here. There it goes ... Wait a minute. Why did we pass the temple entrance? The guide said something and most of the passengers revolted. Yelling and shouting ensued. Apparently we were going somewhere else first and then would come back to the temple. The majority of the passengers would have none of that. They stood up and grabbed their bags and demanded to be let off the bus. I hurried and got off also.

I am glad that most of the other passengers stood up for themselves and demanded to be given the service they had paid for. But at the same time appalled at the fact that the actual certified bus driver (he had a picture badge and everything) sold all his passengers to the tour company. But, such is life traveling in the "rest" of the world

I wonder how much I was worth.

Of Mountains and Men

2007-10-07T11:46:00.000+09:00

In my life, I think I have encountered three main philosophies for when it comes to people and climbing mountains.

In the west (America,let's stick to what I know) the general philosophy is to leave well enough alone. Leave the mountain in as much a pristine state as possible. We really only build trails so as to keep people on a path and keep them from wandering wherever they may choose and causing too much damage to the rest of the wilderness. If you are able to get up the mountain, however difficult the terrain may be, then congratulations. Good for you!

In Korea, it seems to me, the idea is to make the mountain more accessible to the general public. Since there are fewer mountains and maybe more of the general public climbing them, then this makes a bit of sense. Build some steps into the trail now and then. Add a hand-rope where the trail may be steep. Even add a few stairs now and then. OK, maybe you are taking away a bit from the "naturalness" of the hike into the mountains, but as I said, this is understandable.

In China though, to me, the philosophy seems to be one of ... "A mountain? Then we must conquer it. Let us build a concrete covered path. When the trail becomes steep we must haul up granite and cement and build stairs. Better yet, let us carve steps into the very granite of the mountain itself. Let us create paths on the sheer rock face where no path should even exist. And when we get to the top? Let us plunk down several hotels, not heeding the fact that water at the top of a mountain is rather hard to come by. But wait, what about those who feel they don't want to climb the stairs? Then let us build cable cars and tramways to haul those people, and many more, to the top."

I generally like my mountains in the more natural state, but when in Rome ... So I climbed Ht. Hua, one of the 5 (?) sacred mountains in China. No, I didn't use the cable car.

It had been cloudy for days, so I didn't expect to see too much when climbing, even though I had read that the climb up was one of the best parts. The climb started nice, in a temple, but then sure enough, I was walking into clouds. You probably couldn't see more than a hundred meters or so in front of you on the trail, and even less if you looked off the trail to see the mountains that were supposedly just across the valley.There was some nice scenery now and then, though.

The hike was nice, until it came to the stairs. Oh sure the trail was still nice, but with a total length of about six kilometers, the last two being nearly all stairs, one's legs can become a bit tired. Stairs may be a shorter way up the mountain, but a nice trail with a bunch of switchbacks is certainly easier on the legs and knees.

Two kilometers of stairs, can you imagine that? I don't have to anymore. But I must say, getting to the top and seeing the scenery was worth the climb. The top of the mountain, at least what I could see from time to time, with its five peaks, was very dramatic. I spent the night up there hoping the next morning would be better. Other people do the same apparently hoping to see the sunrise. I had no such expectations, so my hopes were not dashed when the next morning also brought clouds.

But though the sunrise had come and gone, the clouds did eventually move. Actually, two layers were created. There was still a layer of haze above the peaks, but the majority of clouds were now below the peaks. So for a while, I was in a sea of clouds.

Despite the growing ache in my legs, I scrambled up and down the peaks, around ledges, and across rather precipitous ridges. I was about to head back down when I realized there was still one of the five peaks I had yet to summit, I couldn't leave with just one peak unclimbed, so it was back up, down, up and then down again.

By that time I knew I should be heading back down the mountain. I was a bit worried about how long it would take, so I walked over to the cable car station to see how much it would cost to go down. Sixty yuan(about $8 US)!! They must be crazy. I figured I had enough time to get down the mountain, especially if I took the other trail down. Besides, this would add more conquered trail under my belt. Down into the clouds.

About halfway down this trail, again at least two kilometers or more of stairs, I began to wonder if I had my priorities screwed up. I wouldn't pay 60 yuan to save myself some time and future pain, but I would spend 20 yuan to buy a Big Mac meal. Hmmmm?

Anyway, I made it down the mountain, opted for the bus for the 8 km road back to the main road, found a bus back into town and rested well that night. But damn did I feel that hike the next day. And the next. And still. Interesting how muscles you didn't even know you had can ache so much. My right Achilles' tendon is a bit swollen, still, and a bit painful to walk on. But it will get better. And I climbed the mountain, up and down. Me, with my own legs. Everyone else I saw up there were obviously cable car riders.

Enjoy the pictures.

(You can click the above image to see all the pictures and see where they were taken.)

I Have A Feeling

2007-10-02T22:50:00.000+09:00

When the time comes for the great exodus into space, I have a feeling that the Chinese waiting rooms and rocket ships will be just as noisy, crowded, and chaotic as the train waiting rooms and train cars are today. It's just a feeling, but ...

We haven't even left the station and there are already spills and trash in the aisles, and people are smoking in the cars. Thank goodness the bathrooms are locked while the train is in the station.

Outside of Lhasa the rivers are a pale blue-white. I watch them go past the window. First one side of the train and then the other. Mountains on either side of the valley rise up and dictate the path we are to take. On what is not exposed rock, grasses climb up the mountainsides coloring them various shades of green. Occasionally a peak reaches up to capture the last rays of the setting sun. The harvested fields mirror the color of those high peaks.

A village passes by. Houses grouped together to make the emptiness of the valley a little less lonely. The rail meets the road and we travel together for a while. Then, we start a slow climb as the road continues to parallel the river below. The tracks go higher, the train slows, and finally we enter a tunnel. And then quickly another. We enter back into the light and the river is again just outside the window. It now winds across a much wider valley as we head toward new snow-capped peaks in the distance. The sun has set, so the light no longer reaches even the highest peak.

The light has faded outside. Only the occasional set of headlights from a car paralleling us on the nearby road can be seen outside. Now starts the long night inside the train car. This is what MP3 players and head phones were made for. Unfortunately I have neither.

Morning light brings a different scene, one that I slept through on the way into Lhasa. Desert. Probably not the Gobi desert proper, but certainly and extension of it. Sand and rock nearly as far as the eye can see. Only in the distance does the terrain change to rocky outcrops and mountains. As we go lower in elevation, bushes and scrub begin to appear and spread across the sandy expanse. Occasionally the mountains move in closer to the tracks, but the distance on either side to those mountains is more than a person would want to walk.

Now and then, what is obviously a tree planting project passes by in the window. While nice to look at, with the green and yellowing leaves, and no doubt well intentioned, I wonder how long those trees will actually last.

A large blue lake takes its time to pass. And later a dry lake bed, even larger. And there! A heard of wild camels. Double-humped, Bactrian camels getting what nourishment they can from the dry scrub. China certainly can be a country of wonders at times.

(Written on my second long trip on a hard seat. It still hasn't gotten any better/easier by the third or fourth trip, either. Sorry, no pictures. The windows were just too dirty and we were traveling into the sun. Lots of reflections.)

To the Roof of the World

2007-09-25T21:21:00.000+09:00

I went on a 5-day trip in Tibet with some good people I hooked up with in Lhasa. If you are a lone traveler, checking the notice boards at the hotels in Lhasa is a good way to find some people to travel with.Trips around Tibet are expensive for one person, so people are always looking for a third, fourth, and sometimes fifth person to help split the costs.

The trip we went on went to Yamdrok-Tso lake, Shigatse and Gyantse to see some monasteries, Rongphu for its monastery, and finally to Everest Base Camp. Except for the "guide" we had, it was a very good trip. My travel companions were good company, the driver was good and very accommodating, and the scenery was spectacular.

One of the first thing I noticed as we drove out of Lhasa was the clear sky. The sky in Lhasa is very clear and blue, but it seemed to be even more so as we continued the drive. I am grateful to my travel companions for allowing me to ride shotgun.

We drove out of Lhasa along the river valley heading for the Kamba-la pass (4794 m) and the view of Yamdrok-Tso lake. All the passes are topped with prayer flags.

As we drove past and under the prayer flags, the lake came into view. It is an incredible sight. The turquoise-blue waters are amazing and the colors of the lake continue to change as the clouds and sun shift in the sky.

After a while contemplating and admiring the scenery, it was back down the mountain and on to Gyantse.

The road took us up the canyon of the Brahmaputra river. At times, the canyon was wide and the river slow. And other times it looked as if there might be some possible class-3 rapids far below.

In the canyon we had our first delay as road work was being carried out across both lanes. (It seemed as if road work was going on nearly everywhere we drove, but for the most part, there was little delay.) In the canyon cars were lined up for probably a kilometer or more on both sides of the section of roadway under repair. The wait wasn't total loss. It allowed me to wander around and get a few pictures. After about an hour we were able to get underway and enjoy even more canyon scenery.

The monasteries in Shigatse and Gyantse were interesting, but I think for me, it was the landscapes I enjoyed the most. We drove through desert with sand dunes, green rolling hills at 4000+ meters, up roads with numerous switchbacks winding their way to the top of mountains, river plains with trees turning to gold, and barely fields ready for harvest. Part of the time, if it wasn't for the lack of scrub and the green moss and grass, I could have swore we were driving through the area outside of Las Vegas. The mountains and plains seemed very similar.

Rongphu monastery was interesting because it is set in the valley leading up to Everest Base Camp. It is small, but being where it is makes it the highest monastery in the world.

The Jeeps and Land cruisers actually stop about four kilometer past Rongphu and four kilometers before the actual base camp. There, there are a collection of tents for use as tea houses and accommodation. Many of them have colorful names. We stayed in one called the "English Hotel." It wasn't very British and the proprietor didn't really speak much English so I am not sure how it got its name. But it was a nice place and the highest elevation I have ever slept at, around 5000meters.

The last four kilometers to EBC must be walked. At 5000+ meters that is no simple task so you could opt for the horse cart ride if you didn't feel up to the task. No, I walked the distance, two times actually, approximately 16 kilometers in total. For the walk you can follow the road and go to where the base camp tents actually are, or you can take the shortcut which takes you up a hill which over looks the whole of base camp, the terminal moraine left over from the receding glacier, and the remnants of the glacier itself. I have always been one for shortcuts, so up I went.

It really is incredible standing there looking up at Everest in the distance. It just captures your attention. You keep looking ... wondering ... what route have the people who climbed it taken, how were the actually able to reach the top. You take one picture, but then you feel you need to take another because you are not sure if you have caught the grandeur of it all. It really is something special.

So now the highest I have ever been is 5250 meters plus or minus a bit. It was a really good trip. The accommodations and facilities weren't always so nice, but that is something you have to expect, and I wasn't expecting much to begin with. All in all, this was possibly one of the best excursions I have ever been on. If you get the opportunity to come to Tibet, you really should consider doing something similar. There is nothing quite like visiting the roof of the world.

Biking at 11,000 Feet

2007-09-20T10:54:00.000+09:00

More or less.

After riding a bike in Beijing, I figured riding couldn't get much more difficult anywhere else. Of course when I was figuring this, I never even considered altitude. Turns out, that wasn't much of a problem either.

Oh sure it affected me, but not in any way I wasn't already used to. Generally when riding, after a particularly long hill climb or a long fast stretch, I am breathing pretty heavily. Mouth open, deep, fast breaths if possible. I may breathe this way for a while until my body gets back into its natural rhythm.

However here in Lhasa, that kind of breathing started about 15 minutes and generally continued throughout unless I consciously tried to slow my breathing down. It wasn't really uncomfortable, just very noticeable. (Oddly, climbing stairs here makes me feel more out of breath than riding a bicycle here.)

I have gone on two rides here in Lhasa. Both of them had their difficulties, but I wouldn't count lack of oxygen among them.

The first ride started well. I headed north out of the city to the Sera monastery at the base of the mountains surrounding the valley. I got there and the ticket taker said the monastery was closed that day. Some kind of monk event. Bummer! I thought since I rode all the way there I might as well take some pictures of the area. I wandered around and then noticed some other people go up to the ticket taker. There was a short conversation, money and tickets were exchanged, and in they went.

Hold on! I went back, asked if it was still closed, and the guy told me no, it was five yuan to go in. Five? The sign said fifty.
"Fifty?" I said.
"No, five"
Who was I to argue. In I went. It was an interesting place. Apparently the monk event was over.
After looking around the monastery I came out, sat down, and had lunch. Yes, peanut butter. And then it was back on the bike. I was headed to another monastery, Deprung, on the same side of the valley, but way on the other end of town. I could have gone back into the city and followed the main roads, but the map I had showed a road running along the base of the mountain. That would probably be more scenic.

After a few false starts I found the road. Unfortunately, the map didn't say that the road was unpaved. Oh well, what the heck, I have been on worse roads. It was the more scenic route, and more interesting allowing me to see more of life in Lhasa. And it was only unpaved in some places. Eventually the unpaved road met with the main road and it was on to Deprung monastery. The actual road up to the monastery was quite a hill climb at this altitude, but I made it.

This monastery was a bit more interesting than the other. It seemed more active, alive. But maybe that was just because there were more monks walking around. It was a nice place.

(Click the image to see photos of the trip.)

Now came the time for one of the best parts of riding a bike. Going downhill. Things were going great, I was enjoying the ride. There was a curve coming up, so I needed to slow down. I was going a little faster than expected, so the back tire started to skid a bit. The suddenly the bike skidded to a complete stop.

Let me explain something here. When a bicycle tire goes into a skid it is more susceptible to lateral, sideways, motion. This is partially due to it no longer spinning. This is generally not a problem ... on a good bicycle. However, because the person who put this bicycle together was obviously incompetent, the little skid this time was a big problem. That bit of sideways motion caused the rear tire to warp, bend, pretzel, whatever you want to call it, it twisted out of shape. If there had been more room in the frame, it probably would have turned into a mobius strip. Whoever had trued the rear wheel obviously didn't know what they were doing. The wheel had been straight, but some of the spokes were overly tight, while others were overly loose. This is what caused the wheel to bend. I had neglected to check for this before starting out.

The wheel was now so warped, it wouldn't even turn in the frame. And I was still up the hill near the monastery. If I had had the tools, I would have fixed it myself. But I didn't, so I couldn't. There was nothing to do but carry the bike down the hill. I picked up the bike so the rear wheel was off the ground and started walking, and walking, and walking.

Now maybe I am just too kind-hearted or something, but if I were in my car and saw someone obviously having difficulty carrying a bike down a road, even with a language barrier, I would at least have given them a ride to some place where they had a better chance of getting more help. At least five cars passed me as I was carrying the bike down the hill.

After about a kilometer or so, I finally got to the main road. Now I had to find a bike shop. Not an easy task in Lhasa, especially on the outskirts of the city. I looked left, right, and left again. I chose left. At least that direction headed back into town, which actually wasn't saying much. I picked up the rear of the bike and started walking. Luckily there was a motorcycle shop not too far down the road. Through mostly sign language, and Tibetan, which I didn't understand but got the gist of, he said it can't be fixed. Or more likely, he couldn't fix it.

By some rather odd coincidence, he had a 15 speed road bike at his shop. He was willing to sell me the rear wheel of the road bike, making that bike useless, for 100 yuan, about $13. This was actually a top quality road bike. Buying a wheel like that in a bike shop probably would have cost close to $100. Still, it was a road bike wheel, I was riding a Mt. bike; it was 15 speeds, the Mt. bike was 18 speeds. But what could I do? I had to get back to town.

I bought the wheel. He changed it. I took the original wheel with me (Heck if I was going to loose a $100 deposit. There had to be someone in town who could fix it.) and rode back into town.

To make a long story short, I found a scooter/bike shop ; the guy straightened and trued the wheel, fixed the flat, and put the original wheel back on the bike, all for 30 yuan. I just gave him the road bike wheel. What use did I have for it?

The second ride was also nice. I headed out of town just to try and see some of the countryside. I got pretty far, but then a storm was moving in in front of me so I decided I should turn around. On the way back I got a flat tire. Fortune or fate I don't know, but it saved me from being caught in the downpour. I walked back to the city I just passed, about 1 km, and had the flat fixed. By that time the rain had mostly stopped, so I continued in the new direction and then headed back to town.

Click the image below to see some photos from the ride. The photos are not bad, but I have to say the images don't do the actual view justice. You really have to be here it see it as it actually is. But have a look anyway.

Mmmmm ... Yak!

2007-09-12T19:09:00.000+09:00

I broke down the other day and had an actual restaurant meal rather than just eating from food shops/stalls. It was a nice place with different cuisines from the area- India, Nepal, Tibet, etc. The menu was in English, but just to make it easier on myself I chose the Nepali Set, with yak. I had the option to choose chicken, mutton, and a couple of others, but I thought, when in Tibet ...

What is the Nepali set you may ask? Well, you get a large plate with some loose rice, not the sticky east Asian kind. Next to the rice is a dollop of some kind of red pepper sauce. Similar to Korean kochujang, but actually a bit tastier. Maybe it was fermented or something. Also on the plate were some mixed vegetables, potatoes, carrots, peas, onions, small broccoli, and some kind of mushroom, in a light curry sauce. Finally, on the plate was what I assume was an homage to the western palate- a single slice each of tomato, carrot, and turnip, on a lettuce leaf.

The final items were a dish of a light curry soup with some kind of leafy vegetable, and a dish of yak pieces in a stronger curry. Maybe it should have been called the Nepali-curry set.

Everything was pretty darn good. Turns out, yak is good eatin'! What does it taste like? No, not chicken. It is pretty much just like beef. The meat was particularly tender. I don't know if that is a quality of yak in general, or just this particular preparation.

Maybe it is because the meat sets out in the open in the street markets. The butchers tend to leave a bit of yak skin/hair on the bone down around the hoof. I assume so you can be sure you are buying genuine yak. In the meat section of the street market, you see one stall after another with big hunks of meat on their tables and a big cleaver for easy portioning. I actually saw one guy using an axe, not a hatchet, to chop up a particularly large piece of meat (beef?). I think it had been frozen.

Anyway, it was a pretty good meal. They were decent sized portions, so I was full after eating. And the whole thing came to 31 Yuan (about $4.13), 25 for the food and 6 for the Coke. (I should have know better than to buy a drink in the restaurant. You can get a coke for 3 at the shop.)

Since then I have bought yak jerky which is also pretty good.

So, when you come to Tibet, try the yak.

Beautiful

2007-09-09T17:57:00.000+09:00

(Edit: Photos added.)

This is the one word I would use to describe the train trip from Beijing to Lhasa. I have some other words I would add, but I'll get to those later.

The train trip is quite an experience. The 9:30 PM departure time seems to be timed well to see some fantastic scenery. Even though the early part of the trip isn't very high in elevation, the countryside is still interesting.

The train follows rivers a lot of the way, so some of the canyons you see are really spectacular. But the real beauty starts as you get closer to the Tibetan plateau. The plains are empty, only covered with moss and some scrub, but they extend off into the distance, sometimes a short distance, to some incredible hills and mountains, both green and snow-capped. We traveled through sun, clouds, rain, and even a snow storm.

The elevation, 4938 meters at the highest, wasn't a problem for me, but I did see some people opt for nose tubes. Actually, during the highest part of the trip, oxygen was pumped into the train car from little valves under the seats. If you want, you can ask for a tube for direct oxygen.

After the highest point, the train starts down toward the Lhasa valley. And the scenery gets even better. Finally you go through a couple of tunnels and enter the valley. High green mountains to either side, some in the distance covered with snow. A fast river flowing below you. You get closer to the city and then you can see the Potala in the distance, the enigmatic icon of Lhasa.

You have arrived.

(Please go easy on me. These were taken from a moving train, out a smudgy window, with reflections. And, sorry, I couldn't get a reliable GPS signal on the train to be able to geotag these photos.)

I could certainly spend a lot of time in this area if I had the money.

Now for those other words about the train trip. Crowded, noisy, annoying, uncomfortable, exhausting, and slightly disgusting, to give you just a few.

If you are contemplating taking this trip after my description, for the sake of your own sanity ( unless you are a hardened, veteran traveler) get a sleeper for the 48 hour trip. Don't choose the hard seat option. I chose the seat because I am traveling alone, and I am cheap when it comes to myself (I am still eating peanut butter, I brought from Korea, for lunch here in Lhasa!) . I don't know if I would choose the seat option again. Remember, this is all just part of my view of the whole experience.

Crowded - The train was over booked almost the whole length of the journey. There were people with no seats standing in the aisle. Many of them for shorter trips of 8, 10, 12, or 24 hours for destinations along the way, but I did see one guy with no seat for the entire trip to Lhasa. He would stand and sometimes sit wherever he could, on the edge of someone else's seat, on a box, or even on the floor. Strange thing was, even though people got off along the way, the train was still over-booked until the last section into Lhasa.

Noisy - I can deal with noise, and a certain amount is to be expected on a train, but man, the profusion of people talking, kids screaming, and train noises was almost overwhelming sometimes. I didn't even get close to quiet until about 2 or 3 AM.

Annoying - Just the general push and shove of people can certainly get on your nerves at times. At each stop, people and their luggage (I use this term loosely. It could be anything from a book-bag, to an over-sized backpack, to overly large sacks of what I assume [hope] was some kind of grain product.) getting on and off and smacking you in the leg, shoulder, or head as they go by. People leaning on your seat or kicking you as they go up and down the aisles. Having to move whenever the person next to you wants to get out (Luckily I had the two-person seat rather than the three.) people spitting, smoking, and throwing trash on the floor when there were signs in three languages clearly stating not to spit, smoke, or throw trash on the floor.

Uncomfortable - This goes hand-in-hand with annoying, but also, whoever designed those seats clearly didn't actually travel in them for 48 hours. They weren't wood, but almost as hard. The key was to find a position for your butt and not move. In time, about 4 or 5 hours, your but and the seat would reach an equilibrium of cushioning (about the softness of a tire tread) and numbness where you could endure the situation. Of course if you moved, it started all over again. Also, the seat backs were fixed vertical and only slightly accommodating to the human spine.

Slightly Disgusting - I say slightly, but others may not be so forgiving. The smoking and spitting is a given here. But also, it was disgusting because of those who had the presence of mind to not actually spit. The thing was, they still did the sniffing, hawking, coughing, and throat clearing one normally does proceeding the actual spit, but they never actually spat. Think about it for a moment. It'll come to you.

The amount of trash that can collect on a train is amazing. A few times during the trip, the train personnel would start at one end of the car and just sweep everything down to the other end. I had the good fortune of being on the collection end of the car. I even heard other passengers gasp as the mountain of trash passed us out the end to be bagged.

And lest I forget ... If you have ever used a squat toilet, then you'll only partially understand what the facilities were like on the train. Imagine using a squat toilet on a bumping jostling train. Now add into the picture 98 people per train car with two squatters per car. Figure in all the various foods eaten in China and what they can do to a person's bowel movements, and multiply it all by 48 hours. Oh yeah, and you are not supposed to throw the toilet tissue down the toilet, so there is a can of the material (yes, used) next to you as you try to do your business. Now you might have a clearer picture of how things were. Sorry about that.

Exhausting - Any long distance travel can be tiring, but I swear, on this train time seemed to slow down. It felt as if I was in the Twilight Zone or something. The train left at 9:30 PM. We click-clacked along for a while and I thought to myself, "This is not so bad, I can do this. Forty-eight hours will be a piece-of-cake." Then I looked at my watch. 10:00. What?!? Thirty minutes, I could have sworn it had been longer than that. I am not a clock-watcher, but after what seemed like an additional lengthy period of time, I looked at my watch again. 10:45. Huh? That's impossible!

The whole journey seemed to turn into a collection of 30 - 45 minute segments that individually felt like many hours, each. Even at night when I was trying to sleep, I remember looking at my watch around 1:30 AM. I woke up a while later realizing I had actually slept for a bit there. Wondering how long it would be until everyone else would wake up, I looked at my watch. 3:00 AM. Impossible!! And it continued throughout the whole trip. It was only a forty-eight hour journey, but each hour seemed to stretch into 2, 3, or 4 hours.

Now please don't let all these negatives put you off taking a trip from Beijing to Lhasa. I am sure with a sleeper instead of a seat the trip would be a lot better. It is just easier to talk about the negative aspects, because with the positive ones, namely the scenery, you just stare in rapt awe. The words don't seem to come. And those that do don't seem to do justice to what you see before you. It certainly was one train trip that I will long remember.

I will try and have some pictures up before too long. Until then, have a look at this:
http://triptracker.net/trip/2334/
This is a track of the bike ride I took in Beijing. If you click the map, you'll get a bigger version that you can zoom in and move around on. I'll put more tracks up later. Have fun.

Musings On Travel

2007-09-02T19:58:00.000+09:00

Beijing is an interesting city. Like most major cities, the cultural aspects most people come to see are dotted around the city like little islands of the past in a large, more modern sprawl. You usually can make your way to these islands pretty easily if you don't mind paying extra or enduring extra, unwanted, side trips. I, however, have a rather low tolerance for such things.

I am not so sure how good of a traveling companion I would be. I can be very accommodating when I am with others, but I know, when I see someplace on a map, I feel there has got to be some way to get there. And I tend to try and do it by myself. Sure, I may ask for directions occasionally, but I am not the type to just hop in a taxi and say, "Take me to ..."

Yes, this does end up with me taking some rather long unplanned (and planned) walks, having to wait for buses which only run at certain times, confusing buses, missing connections, and generally enduring a lot that taxi riders would never even have to consider. My wellspring of patience rarely ever runs dry, though, so I do endure it and usually make it to where I am headed, sooner or later.

And when I do, there is an extra sense of accomplishment. "I've made it." Sure, the locals do it all the time, but for me, doing what I set out to do makes that little part of the trip a bit, just a bit, more special. After all, someone did say, "The journey is the reward." And completing that journey, through your own ingenuity, is even a bit more rewarding.

I have a few pictures for you. Just a few shots, out of many, of some of the places I've been so far. (Don't think you are missing much because you can't see the rest of the photos. There are only so many ways you can photograph a wall or temple.)

The first couple are interesting. I have always thought that food-on-a-stick was a great invention, but the Chinese seem to almost elevate it to an art.

The Great Wall. One more of the Seven Wonders I can now tick off my list.

A lot of Chinese temples are fairly familiar, having just come out of Korea. The color schemes are a bit more varied, and the complexes sometimes a bit more grandiose, but still rather familiar.

I am off to Tibet next. Taking the train from Beijing to Lhasa. Being the cheap bastard that I am, I opted for the "hard seat" rather than any kind of sleeper. I may regret that after the approximately 48 hours are up. Wish me luck.

(P.S. I can post to my blog, but I can't (without a lot of difficulty) actually view my own blog. Apparently "blogspot.com" addresses are blocked in China. So forgive me if my posts appear a bit strange now and then.)

Things I Have Learned ...

2007-08-30T22:28:00.000+09:00

... Riding a bicycle in Beijing.

You shouldn't look at the girls in skirts riding the opposite direction.
You shouldn't look at the girls in skirts walking, either. (All the girls are just too distracting.)
Don't panic! It may feel disconcerting with all those people riding so close to you, but they are professionals at it.
Even with that taxi about to clip your handlebars or in the process of cutting you off, don't panic!
The lights, the police blowing whistles and the guys waving flags aren't very effective when it comes to traffic control. The seem to be looked on more as guidelines, really.
That road you just passed that looked like the one you wanted, more than likely was.
Your personal space on a bicycle in Beijing extends only as far as your handlebars and front and rear tires. And sometimes not even that far.
It may all feel and look dangerous, but it all seems to work pretty well, actually.
Bicycle lanes are a good thing to have, even if you do have to share them with cars both parked and moving.
The people on electric bicycles seem to have a bit of a superiority complex over people on regular bicycles, as evidenced by the frequent use of their fancy electric horns.
A foreigner on a bicycle apparently isn't such a big deal in Beijing. (Compare this with Korea where even in bigger cities, parents in cars will point you out to their children as they pass.)
A squeaky bicycle may seem annoying at first but it lets others know you are coming up on them. Always a good thing when you are not sure of the proper "cutting off" etiquette.

All in all it wasn't a bad experience. My years of dodging road traffic served me well in Beijing. It was good to get on a bike again. Even a bike like that.

Leaving On a Jet Plane ...

2007-08-23T12:10:00.001+09:00

And I really don't know when I will be back again.

Hey, did I mention I will be traveling soon? Yep, I have decided to take a break from work for a while and see more of the world.

I will start in China, see some parts of South-east Asia that I have missed, and then into India. After that, where I go is anyone's guess. This trip may be a long one, possibly six months.

I will try to post some entries or pictures here from time to time, but I can't guarantee how often.

Before I go, let me leave you with a little bit more of Korea. Below are some of the pictures I have taken here over the years.There are more on my public Picasa site. Go have a look.

More photos!

Wish me luck on my journey. Oh, and if, somehow, I happen to get abducted along the way. I don't negotiate with kidnappers. And you shouldn't bother to either.

Remember ... Jama rek.

Yet More Maps

2007-08-17T17:38:00.001+09:00

I thought I would try and get a few more things that I have been working on out before I finally lose my computer access.

Here is a Google Earth file of all the subways in South Korea.

South Korean Subways

The original work is not mine, but comes from the fine group of people at the Google Earth (Keyhole) forum. (Can't seem to find the actual post at the moment, sorry.)

It has all the lines in Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Busan, and Gwangju. It also includes platform locations and station exits for many stations. Of course the subway system is a work in progress, so there are a few mistakes and omissions, but nothing major.

Now this might be useful on a GPS receiver also. Not for when you are actually on the subway, but for when you are above ground. If you are wandering the streets of any of these cities and want to find the nearest subway entrance, just pull out your trusty GPS unit and do a "Find" for POIs and viola. You are magically pointed to the nearest subway entrance.

I cleaned up the file some and converted it into something that will work on a Garmin GPS unit. It is transparent so it won't cover up your other loaded maps. I will give you the image so you can load it on your GPS, but take note. I had some problems making this work with MapSource. It would only work correctly if I sent it directly to the GPS unit. Also, you must use the provided type file to get the subway lines the right color. If you know how to use SendMap, then you'll have no problem adding this image to your GPS. Here is the zip file which includes the image and type file.

Subways image and type files.

One more image file for you. This one I just did to teach myself how to do it and to see if everything worked OK. It is a contour map of the area around Andong-shi. It has major and minor contours at 20 meter intervals. The data comes form the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission program which mapped most of the Earth's elevations. The data for Korea was only available at 90 meter resolution, which is not the best, but it was all that I had to use at the time. It is also a transparent map. If you want to see those mountains ahead of you on the map, download this file and use SendMap to load it onto your GPS unit.

Andong-shi contours image file. This is a large file (+10 Megs) so I've put it on a file hosting site. If it disappears, let me know and maybe I can send it to you.

More Maps

2007-08-14T13:51:00.001+09:00

Since I was talking about Google Earth a bit ago, let me continue. Google Earth is a great program. It lets you see the world from a whole different perspective. You should try it out. There are versions in several languages, even Korean,

Unfortunately, the images are only as good as the data and, for South Korea, the data is certainly lacking. Look at this ...

On the left is the image data for where I grew up, Las Vegas, USA. On the right is the image data for where I live now, Andong, South Korea. Now not all of Korea looks like Andong. The major cities have some very nice high resolution imagery. Unfortunately most of South Korea is pretty low resolution (a lot of North Korea is pretty hi-res, though).

And it is not just image data; road data suffers also. Most western countries have excellent road data which displays in Google Earth and Maps. Even some eastern countries have good data. In fact, South Korea is one of the few industrialized nations which doesn't have good road data. Heck, even India has good road data. Sure you can see some roads in Korea, but what is displayed (as of this post) is rather laughable. Only the major highways are shown and then even not all of those. And the positions for those roads are only good if you are viewing form about 250 km up in the sky (Actually, now, no road data is being displayed for Korea.).

Part of the reason for the great road data in the USA and Canada is the fact that information about the roads is gathered by the government using public funds, so the data becomes public property. In India they have the legacy of British colonization from which they inherited a system of data organization. Also Google is working with the local population in India to help update road data in some cities.

I figure I can help Google in the same way. Use my local knowledge of the place to provide far better maps of Korea than what is available at the moment. Well, at least my small portion of Korea. So here it is. I give you Andong, with roads (and rivers and lakes and more).

I've even got data for when you zoom in close.

In addition to the road data, some lakes, rivers, trails, and interesting locations are there for you to see. This was all done mostly through capturing location data with my GPS receiver as I rode around the city on my bicycle. Other information was entered from scanned maps and such. I am offering it here for anyone to use. Take the data, use it, modify it, do whatever you want with it. Just make sure you read the Creative Commons copyright information I have for this site and follow the restrictions. Here is the Google earth file for you to download.

Andong-Area

A few notes about the data ... the rivers, lakes, and streams were all taken from scanned map data, so possibly the outlines and waterways may not match up exactly with the images from Google Earth since the image data is from a different time period. Every road or trail shown is passable on a bicycle and most of them are drivable. However, paths listed as trails would likely be bike or walking only. Unpaved roads may be just that or they may be paved; even so you should probably treat them as trails because they are usually single lane farm roads in poor condition. Pedestrian roads, one way roads, restricted roads or intersections and similar are not listed as such. This is just path data. As always, I just provide you with the data. What you do with it is your business. I can not be held responsible if you get into trouble using the data from this site.

Now you may be saying to yourself... "Wow, this is a great resource. Now if I could only put this on my Garmin GPS receiver it would be really useful." Well you can because that is the really the whole reason I collected the data in the first place.

Here is the source file, Andong-Area-with_points.MP, for GPSMapedit. Take it, correct it, add to it.

If you would rather just have the image file to use with SendMap, here you go. Andong-Area-with_points.img

You should right-click those files and choose "Save as ..." to download. The data is probably in its final for. I doubt I will be making any additions to it. You can always find it here, or have a look at Mapcenter were you can find lots of map data. In fact, you might want to use the Mapcenter.com img instead of the one here. The one at Mapcenter has POI (points of interest) indexing.

Mileage

2007-08-09T17:04:00.001+09:00

No, I haven't posted in a while, but I haven't been all that lazy.

One thing I have been doing is riding my bike. With the consecutive streak ending about two weeks ago, for ten weeks I went on ten rides. The total distance (Is there a equivalent metric word for 'mileage'?) for those ten rides was 1024 km.

That's about about three times the distance from Seoul to Pusan and close to four times the distance from east coast to west coast. Unfortunately I was not traveling in a straight line. Most of the rides were loops out of and back into Andong. Much of the area I have covered before, but I did see some new interesting scenery.

Here is an image which shows the different routes I took.

If you want to explore the routes more closely, you can download the KMZ file and peruse in in Google Earth. (If aren't using Google Earth yet, you really should be.)

If you want to see a Google Maps version, go to this page. Note that the routes are less precise than the Google Earth version and the map may slow your computer down if you have an old computer. Also, only a small area west of Andong has high resolution imagery. Have a look, though.

If you want to follow in my footsteps, the route labeled "06/30/07" runs through some pretty nice scenery. Canyons, rivers, valleys, mountains, the whole gamut. It is really nice after a rain shower when the air has been cleaned of all the haze. The green can certainly be amazing here.

Long Ago and Far Away

2007-04-21T14:44:00.000+09:00

Just a photo from several years ago and several hundred kilometers away.

This was taken in Cheongju, near Soewon university. It feels like a long time ago, but it was really only 2001. Things were different for me then. Better.

These days aren't so bad, but not so great, either.

Well Ain't I special?

2007-04-12T21:29:00.000+09:00

HowManyOfMe.com

There are
10
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

"Robert" is the third most popular name, though. There are 4,751,484 people in the U.S. with the first name of Robert. So basically, without my last name, I am just one of nearly five million. Sometimes it feels that way.

Interestingly there is currently only one person in the USA named "Elvis Presley" and two people named "Bob Marley." But there are six people named "Jesus Christ."

Personalities

2007-01-24T15:32:00.001+09:00

I am not much one for psychology, but I suppose it does have its uses now and then. That being said, on a whim I took a Jung Typology test on the Internet the other day. Turns out I am a ...

INTJ

Introverted Intuitive Thinking Judging

Strength of the preferences %

78 38 75 33

According to the test I am:

very expressed introvert
moderately expressed intuitive personality
distinctively expressed thinking personality
moderately expressed judging personality

I vaguely understand what this means, but what I find more interesting are other people rated as INTJ. It seems I am in the company of such individuals as:

Dan Aykroyd
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Chevy Chase
Peter Jennings
Arnold Schwarzenegger
General Colin Powell
John F. Kennedy

As for INTJ fictional characters, there are:

Cassius (Julius Caesar)
Gandalf the Grey (J. R. R. Tolkein's Middle Earth books)
Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)
Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' nemesis

Quite an interesting group of people.

If you want to read more about us INTJ's, have a look here.

INTJ type description by D.Keirsey

INTJ type description by J. Butt and M.M. Heiss

If you want to take the test for yourself, just visit this site.

"Personality has the power to open many doors, but character must keep them open."
~ Unattributed
"We have lost the art of living, and in the most important science of all, the science of daily life, the science of behavior, we are complete ignoramuses. We have psychology instead."
~ D.H. Lawrence
"I honor my personality flaws, for without them I would have no personality at all."
~ Unattributed

Snakes On A Trail

2006-10-06T23:50:00.000+09:00

On the last three rides I took I have seen five snakes. And one weasel. It must be snake season or something. They are probably out catching the last bits of warmth before the cold hits. I almost squashed three of them, but I was able to stop the bike just in time.

It is actually kind of amazing that I even saw the snakes. Usually when I see a snake here in Korea it looks like this ...

Unfortunately I see a lot of squashed snakes.

This is one of the green ones. So far I have only seen a green and a brown variety. The live ones I saw recently were three greens and two browns. The greens only get up to about 60 cm or so, but one of the brown ones was at least a full meter or more.

Here is a better shot of what the green ones look like.

This one wasn't alive either, though. I found it at the start of spring when there is a lot of spraying going on. Perhaps it went through some sprayed fields or ate a poisoned mouse or something. When I found it it was newly dead.

I haven't been able to catch a live one. They are just too fast, and the grass is too tall.

Until now!

I saw this little guy, today- the 6th, in the middle of the road and hopped off my bike. I chased him back and forth across the road a little while, to build up my courage and tire him out. Eventually I grabbed his tail and held it up so I could keep him from going anywhere and then get a better chance to grab his head.

When I first made a grab for his head, he actually bit me. He doesn't have any fangs and his head was at a bad angle for the bite, so he couldn't hold on to my finger. But it sure scared the shit out of me. Eventually I was able to pin his head down and pick him up. Finally I caught one!

It was quite a chore to pull the camera out of my waist bag, take off the lens cap, zoom, and frame the picture all with one hand. I tried to get a picture with his tongue flicking out, but it was just too fast. By the time I saw his tongue and pressed the shutter, it was already back inside.

After a lot of pictures I thanked him and set him on the side of the road to which he was originally heading. Too many snakes here end up squashed, beaten, or in bottles of alcohol. I am glad I could help get this one off the road and on his way. One more close-up of his head.

I like how his eye color fits in with the color on his skin. If you happen to see a snake, please don't kill it.

Arrrrgh!

2006-09-19T08:20:00.000+09:00

My pirate name is:

Red Roger Rackham

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Meet Some Friends.

2006-09-01T11:32:00.000+09:00

There is a new post over on my photo-blog. Why don't you go over and have a look and meet some of the friends who have come to visit me here in Andong.

Yes, I do have male friends too.

Engrish

2006-08-21T22:02:00.000+09:00

No that is not a typo in the headline. One thing ESL/EFL teachers have to deal with is that countries that do not natively speak English often develop their own particular form of what they think English is. A common slang for this non-native version of English is "Engrish". You can read all about it on Wikipedia, but basically "Engrish" is the mistranslation of the native language into what is thought to be correct English, or, incorrect words based on the mispronunciation of English. Koreans have their own particular problem with English often referred to as "Konglish", the misuse of English words in the Korean language- "apart" for apartment, "handle" when they mean steering wheel, and many others. But for now, let's focus on Engrish.

The other day I was out riding and saw this ...

I enjoy learning about about foreign cultures just as much as the next person. But I have to say, I was a bit disappointed when I got to the village and didn't see one fork. In fact, there was no tableware to be seen at all. No forks, knives, spoons, gravy boats, not even a single chopsticks.

If you haven't figured it out yet, that should read "folk" village. Yes, the constant R/L problem for Asians rears its ugly head again. OK, so they made a mistake. But you would think that something like that would be easily spotted, even by a non-English speaker.

Here in Korea, other than on informational signs, English seems to be used to give a product an important air, as if having English text on a product makes it better, more important than any other product. That actually is a bit odd from a non-Korean's perspective since probably 95% of the products that use some form of English are actually being advertised for Koreans who would not necessarily understand or care about the English writing anyway.

There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of examples, but let me give you one rather prominent example. A while back when new credit cards were coming out left and right, one big name company brought out a credit card and called it the "She's card." Now I don't know this for a fact, and I can think of no other logical explanation, so I have to assume that what they were actually thinking of was "Her card." Why would they call their credit card the "She is card?"

The Korean language has a character that functions very similar to the apostrophe s ('s) in English, and in Korean, they can stick it on everything. Unfortunately, whoever dreamed up this product apparently wasn't aware that the 's does not go with personal pronouns.

What is even more amazing to me is that, apparently, from this product's inception through production, not once did anyone bother to actually check to see if the language was correct. This is a big name company, surely they could have stopped a foreign employee in the hallway, spent five minutes explaining the concept to them and found out that the name was incorrect. Heck, even an above average Korean speaker of English could have seen the mistake. Yet the product went through the design, approval, and production process without one person bothering to question the correctness, let alone the actual necessity of the English.

This happens all the time here. Surely if you are going to spend thousands of dollars on a product and advertising campaign, you can spend ten more minutes, call up a native speaking English teacher at a university or even a "hagwon" (private 'cram' school), ask them about the English and, heck, give them $25 for their time. It would save your company a lot of embarrassment later on. Needless to say, promotion of the "She's" credit card didn't last too long, though it still exists.

"Always blame it on the guy who doesn't speak English."
~ Homer Simpson

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."
~ Nelson Mandela

"I speak two languages, Body and English."
~ Mae West

Over Hill and Dale

2006-08-19T19:12:00.000+09:00

I finally got my bicycle fixed. It was out of the picture for a while due to a part just snapping on the last ride. A piece of metal in the rear derailleur is what broke. I assume it is just from age and use, after all, my mountain bike is almost ten years old, and it has been ridden hard over the years.

Luckily it broke on the way back, only a few kilometers away from Andong and home. And even luckier, someone stopped and offered me a ride home when they saw me pushing the bike along the road. Unfortunately it cost Won 80,000 (about $80 US) for the new part.

I would have gone ridding today, but it is raining, so I thought I would update you with some recent rides around Andong. I just attach my eTrek GPS unit to the handle bars and away I go. Here is what happens.

Click the image for a larger version. These are nearly all the rides to date. As you can see, there is not much new territory covered, but some of the new locations are pretty nice. Click below to open a scrollable map of the last six rides in a new window.

There are some pretty neat things you can do with a GPS. In the map window, if you zoom in on the ride dated June 4th, and follow it along to just next to the expressway, you can see this ...

In a large rest area parking lot next to the expressway, I rode my bicycle around to draw my initials. It is kind of like virtual graffiti on a large scale. At the time, I thought I was making the letters rather big, but apparently not as big as I had thought.

If you have Google Earth, you can click this link:

Google Earth file

And then zoom in and scroll around all you want.

I think I'll have to replace another part on my bicycle soon, too. For a while now I haven't been able to use the center sprocket on the front chain ring. I can still ride, but I am mostly unable to use a whole set of gears. That part will be expensive, though, due to the fact that I would have to replace the whole crank set. Is it worth it, or do I just keep riding as is? I don't know how much longer I will be in Korea, but I know I'll need to have some way to get away from the city at times or I might go nuts.

Me? Really?

2006-08-10T13:08:00.000+09:00

Just playing with some of the interesting things on the Internet.

They didn't really have any that would look like a guy in his 40's. I guess I could have chosen gray hair, but my hair is not all gray yet.

Random Photo From The Past # 4

2006-07-18T16:46:00.000+09:00

Here is another photo from my travels of the past. It is from Malaysia again, on the island of Langkawi. Another old man, this time walking down the beach and deciding to sit under the palm trees for a while. I don't think he had anywhere to go, but then on an island, that is not such a bad thing.

I believe this photo is from early 2000. The original was color, but I filtered it to black & white.

Places I Have Lived

2006-07-09T23:56:00.000+09:00

Since I am on the subject of Google Earth, I thought I would share with you a video I made using Google Earth and some other tools. Be gentle on me; this is the first time I have done something like this.

I have traveled a lot of places, but this is just a tour of the three places I have lived. The first is Las Vegas, NV, where I grew up. The second is N'Dungu Kebbeh in The Gambia where I served in the Peace Corps. And the last one is Andong, South Korea where I teach English. I have actually lived several places in Korea, but we'll save that tour for another time. You can actually see the houses in Las Vegas and N'Dungu Kebbeh, but the resolution is not that good in Andong.

Have a look and let me know what you think. Yeah, I know the video is a bit long. Sorry.

My homes around the world.

If you want to see the tour in a much larger version, just click on the following link, and let the file load into Google Earth. Once it is loaded, find it in your "Temporary Places" folder, expand HomeTour.kmz, highlight "Home tour" then press F10. There will be no music, but the view will be much larger, and you can control the movement. Have fun.
Home Tour

A Clearer Picture of Things

2006-06-21T23:49:00.000+09:00

If you have visited this blog before, you may have noticed I sometimes use Google Earth to display the rides I take around Andong on my bicycle. It is a really useful and neat tool. Recently, Google released a lot of new, high resolution data to go with Google Earth and Google Maps. A lot of cities in the USA received new data, but many other places did too. Korea is one of those places.
(If you click the Google Maps links in this post, be sure to select the 'Satellite' box in the upper right.)

The data is a bit spotty, most of those brown (or non-green) squares are recent data. But having even that incomplete data can mean a world of difference in what you are able to see. Take a look at this ...

On the left is the old, low resolution data, and on the right is the newer, higher resolution image. Quite a difference, don't you think? Google Earth link. Google Maps link. By the way, I believe that facility pictured there in the high resolution image is a driving testing center. Sorry, I don't know the city name.

This new data is pretty mixed. Some of the image data was taken in one season, and other data taken in a different season. This can lead to some wild images. Here you can see winter in the mountains the same time as fall (I believe) and right next to each other. Google Earth link. Google Maps link. That black splotch on the right is the shadow of a cloud (another problem with some of the data) just out of the picture.

Not only is this new data interesting, it can also be useful. I have posted about Hahoe village here in this blog before. It is a popular tourist attraction near Andong displaying the country's cultural heritage mostly in the form of old style houses. Here is what it looks like from above. You can see the shape of the village as the river wraps around it. If you zoom out, you can see the river and the cliffs on the left. Google Earth link. Google Maps link. If you use Google Earth, you can zoom in and tilt the images to see things in 3-D. Note though, the actual altitude data is not as high resolution as the image data -- meaning you won't see most small mountains.

And, exploring all this new data is just plain fun. You can see some really cool things ... This is not far from Andong. I think this plane, and its shadow, are on its way to the Yechon airport which is about 25 km. in the direction this plane is headed. Google Earth link. Google Maps link.

You should really try Google Earth, or at least Google Maps and explore some of this wonderful world we live in. Have fun!

Travels in Korea

2006-06-09T22:45:00.000+09:00

Over on my Photo Blog I have posted a few pictures I took on a short trip last summer. I went to visit a friend in Daejeon, but while there we visited the zoo. Go have a look and see some of the animals in the zoo. Click the photo below or this link.

A Birthday Celebration.

2006-05-24T15:16:00.000+09:00

A few weeks ago, in Korea and much of the rest of the Asian world, it was Buddha's birthday. One of the ways it is celebrated here in Andong is with lantern festivals and parades. The lanterns are generally made of paper or fabric stretched over a frame.This particular "lantern" was rather elaborate. Not only was it very large, it also moved and breathed smoke and fire. I'll try and get some more of the pictures up soon.

Despite it being Buddha's birthday, unfortunately, they weren't serving any birthday cake.

Random Photo From The Past #3

2006-05-17T11:51:00.000+09:00

This photo is also from Malaysia, but this time from a little further south. I am pretty sure this is from very early 2000 but I don't know the exact date. Generally I am not much of a people photographer unless I know the person, but now and then I do fire off a few shots.
No, I don't know the man. He was just sitting in a corner outside a church and he looked interesting. I remember actually waiting until he looked up at me. Then I clicked, gave a friendly smile, and moved on. I think it is his glance at the camera, from just under the brim of his hat, that makes the picture interesting to me. What do you think?

To Your Health

2006-05-16T14:25:00.000+09:00

We all know that kissing can be fun, but now scientists have found that kissing can also help people suffering from allergies. Scientists in Japan have determined that a 30 minute session of kissing may help to suppress your body's allergic reaction to pollen.The scientists found that kissing works by relaxing the body and reducing the production of histamine which is what causes the sneezing, watery eyes, and runny nose when you are exposed to pollen. The experiments also showed that hugging and cuddling were not enough, it had to be kissing to reduce the levels of histamine.

I have always wondered what purpose my allergies serve. I would much rather spend 30 minutes kissing each morning than take a pill. Now all I have to do is find someone to help me out. Any volunteers?

Read more here.

"Her kisses left something to be desired - the rest of her."
~ Unknown

"To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first."
~ Janeane Garofalo

"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul."
~ Judy Garland quotes

The Big Picture

2006-05-04T12:40:00.000+09:00

OK, here is another update on all the bicycle rides I take here around Andong. If you haven't seen the earlier postings, what I do is strap my Garmin eTrek unit to the handlebars of my bike (I have kind of MacGyver-ed my own mount) and go for a spin around the countryside, all the while recording my position via GPS satellite. When I get home, I download the data to my computer and display the maps in any number of various ways. All good fun!

I have displayed all the recorded rides this time, so things are looking pretty colorful. As you can see (click for a bigger image) I have covered a lot of territory. I don't have a total distance for all these rides handy, but the last one I took, that southern yellow east-west line, was just over 88 km. all the way around. Maybe some day I'll post some statistics on the rides.

If you want to have a closer look at some of the rides, I have a Google map for you of the last five I took. Click this link and a Google Map will open in a new window. Once there, you can scroll around by clicking and dragging the map, zoom in or out with the scale on the side, and turn individual rides on or off by clicking on the colored name.

Something interesting ... Find the spot on the dark blue trail, 23-April, where I cross the lake/river - straight to the north. Center the map on that spot by double-clicking there. Then click on the zoom scale between the 5th and 6th mark from the top. (Note: if the trail doesn't redraw after the zoom, you can make it redraw by clicking the trail name off then back on. It might be slow.) With the trail off, you can see the bridge. With the trail on, you can see where it looks like I went past the bridge and down into the lake.

I assure you I didn't ride my bike into the lake. I am not sure when these images were taken, but the lake is not as wide as it looks in the picture. There is a boat ramp there, and actually the lake is about half the width you can see in the picture. I don't think the lake has been up to these levels in quite a while.

If you want to see the rides in 3-D you can download the Google Earth KMZ file. Just click on this link and the file will load and start up Google Earth. Zoom, pan, tilt, and view to your heart's content.

Of Policies and Politics

2006-04-21T16:24:00.000+09:00

I originally took this test a while ago, but only recently rediscovered the captured images when I had to migrate my documents to a new Windows XP system.

I have often wondered where I fit in the political spectrum. I am registered as a Republican, but I always vote policy above party. That has meant that I have voted across party lines several times. Personally, I don't know why anyone would vote a party line if their inklings lean in another direction. If you go to PoliticalCompass.org you can take a test that will categorize your way of thinking and plot you on a graph of Left vs. Right and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian.

As you can see from my score, I am pretty close to middle of the road. I know I definitely don't have any strong leanings on way or another, but there are some things that concern me, and I think they show up in the graph.

While I don't necessarily believe in communism, I do believe that the class structure of haves and have-nots has gone a bit too far. While not an anarchist, I do think that individual liberties do sometimes outweigh the need for state control.

Thankfully I am not in George Bush's or Sadddam Hussein's regions. And I think being in the same quadrant as Nelson Mandela and The Dalai Lama puts me in some pretty good company.

What about you, where do you fit in the political spectrum? Take the test and see. Let me know if you are in my neighborhood.

Just a quick side note. I retook the test when posting this entry, and it seems I have moved a little more to the left, but am the same on the anarchy scale.